Come Hell or Helheim
by Xomniac
Summary: Gang wars. Literal Nazis. Endbringers. And so, so much worse just waiting in the wings. A slow motion apocalypse is almost impossible to derail alone. But together? Maybe, just maybe they'll stand a chance... if they don't blow the world up first. Worm Duo-SI
1. Chapter 1

**[HELL]**

" _Everything's in position down here. Y'all about at the backdoor?"_

"You're not southern," he replied to the voice over his headset, metal fingers tapping on the helicopter's hull. "Stop saying y'all, seriously."

" _Four years of college in the south, sue me."_

"Yeah? I'm more southern than you'll ever be, and _I_ don't say y'all."

" _Listen you—"_

" _Attention,"_ a new voice came over the line, silencing both men instantly. Female, monotone. A little blue imp popped up on the Tinkertech HUD in his goggles, mouth moving in time with the voice. " _The final warrant has come through. We have full authorization. You may commence the operation."_

" _Finally!"_ he hissed, almost reverently, grinning as he tapped the side of his goggles. "This is Belias to all teams, I repeat, Belias to all teams. We have the greenlight, Operation Normandy is a go! Garuda and I will take the roof, Mateus and Titan will surround and secure the ground. Deltas One, Two and Three will lock down all enemy support. All teams, move out!" His grin widened as the helicopter's blades roared even louder above him, and his legs tensed as the vehicle shifted beneath him.

" _Roger that, Blazkowicz going in."_

"Wrong game and Bismarck's got more of a claim on that than you do, but good attitude!" He hooked his fingers into the helicopter's door and yanked it open, standing strong against the high winds as he looked down at the skyscraper erected beneath him.

His smile became downright savage as he took in the other two helicopters circling along with his own, the five APCs disgorging troops so far down below at street level… and the crown emblazoned on the building's side.

"Our target is the Medhall Corporate Headquarters!" He shouted over the din of his ride. "Deal with any resistance, locate and secure Maxwell Anders, and apprehend any and all Parahumans on site! And as always…"

His smile became downright savage as he pumped his metal arm, steam whistling from its every joint.

"Lethal force _is_ authorized. ENGAGE!"

A rallying cry rang out as— **WHOA.**

 **Okay, no, fuck this** — **HOLD** _ **EVERYTHING**_ **!**

 **[==V==]**

 ***Bitchingly Ridiculous Outstanding Biotch joins the conversation***

 _[ADMINISTRATOR D HAS COME ONLINE]_

 _ADMIN D: WHAT? NOT LIKING THE SHOW?_

 **BROB—At the moment? Not very! Not only did you snatch the most hilarious piece of entertainment I've seen in eons, but you gave me the wrong spaciotemporal coordinates! I am** _ **not**_ **starting in the goddamn middle. I want to start where all** _ **good**_ **stories begin. At the fucking** _ **beginning**_ **.**

 _ADMIN D:_ EXCUSE _ME!? WHAT ARE YOU—OH WAIT, FUCK, FORGOT TO CARRY HALF A MILLION DIGITS, MY BAD. CORRECT BY THREE-J-ZETA AND INVERT._

 **BROB—This is your idea of a 'gift I'd never forget'? You're kidding, right?**

 _ADMIN D: HEY HEY, OFF THE HIGH HORSE. RECHECK THE TIMELINE YOU WERE FOLLOWING, WOULD YOU?_

 **BROB—Alright, but I don't see what difference it will—Eh?** _ **Ohhh,**_ **I see. You split the timelines! Alright, so you didn't directly mess with him, so I won't just out and out terminate your existence… but still, this doesn't answer the biggest question of all: why show me this?**

 _ADMIN D: WEEEELL, AS YOU'RE NO DOUBT AWARE, YOU AND YOUR… LET'S SAY_ 'PERSON OF INTEREST' _HAVE BECOME QUITE POPULAR IN OUR CIRCLES RECENTLY, AND WHILE THE LITTLE TOAD IS IMPRESSIVE, I'LL ADMIT… I WAS ALWAYS MORE FASCINATED BY YOU._

 **BROB—Me?**

 _ADMIN D: ABDUCTION, ANGUISH, AGONY… AND THOSE ARE JUST THE 'A'S. ALL THESE AND MORE YOU'VE INFLICTED, SORROW AND SUFFERING, TORTURE AND TORMENT, LIKE NONE BEFORE HAVE EVER DREAMED! NOT LIKE THOSE OTHER PETTY, HAM-HANDED FOOLS WHO SIMPLY DROP A METEOR AND CALL IT A DAY, NO, YOU'RE_ CLEVER _. IT'S JUST SO… SO…_

 **BROB—So…?**

 _ADMIN D: SO…_ HOT.

 **BROB—...Administrator D… did, did you kidnap an alternate version of my favorite plaything and then drop him into what has been conceptually recognized as 'The Multiverse's Official Shithole of Shitholes', thereby unleashing massive amounts of chaos and madness upon both him and said Shithole... in order to** _ **court me?**_

 _ADMIN D: MMMORE LIKE TO PROMPT YOU TO ROCK MY OMNI-EXISTENCE, BUT IN LAYMANS TERMS YES. WHY, IS IT WORKING?_

 **BROB—Every universe within a membrane of me just imploded, and I'm fairly certain that a new multiverse is rising from the ashes.** _ **The fuck do you think!?**_

 _ADMIN D: I THINK I NEED TO START CLEARING OUT SOME SPACE BEFORE WE ACCIDENTALLY CRUSH OUR_ OTHER _FUN~ EVERYONE ELSE IS OUT OF LUCK, THOUGH._

 **BROB—Stop, I can only exist in so many dimensions at a time!**

 _ADMIN D: I THINK I CAN BUMP IT UP A NOTCH._

 **BROB—You lie.**

 _ADMIN D: THAT SNAPSHOT WAS MISSING SOMETHING. WHOEVER SAID I SENT HIM IN…_ _ **ALONE?**_

 **BROB—You don't mean…**

 _ADMIN D: REINCARNATION WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE THIS ONE. BUT I HAD BIGGER PLANS._ BETTER _PLANS._

 _ADMIN D:...HELLO? HEEELLOOO? WHERE'D YOU—MMPH!? Mmm…~_

 **INTRODUCING, A TERRIBLE IDEA GONE HORRIBLY... RIGHT?**

 **YET ANOTHER JOINT GORGONEION AND XOMNIAC PRODUCTION…**

 **[Come Hell…]**

It was a perfectly average and normal morning in New York City's ever-famous Central Park. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing—

" _...aaaaAAAAAAGH!"_

 _SMASH! CRASH!_ SNAP!

"OW! OW! _YEOW!"_

Aaand hapless young adults were falling from the sky, smashing through the leaves and branches of a lone oak that only just managed to reduce his downward velocity to 'extremely painful' instead of 'immediately fatal'.

Well, only one young adult was doing that, but still, noteworthy.

"Ah-hah-hah- _hoooow… oh_ my tailbone..." the young man whined, sitting up and rubbing his throbbing rear end miserably. He was a gangly, blonde young man in his early twenties. His frame was slender, but he made up for it in height. He was wearing a black hooded jacket, an urban camouflage t-shirt, black cargo pants, and had a pair of headphones hanging around his neck.

"What the _hell—?"_ Jeremiah Cross's started to curse in both pain and confusion—

Something small and light bounced off of his forehead, landing on the ground next to him. A quick glance over showed a pair of… glasses? But he didn't wear glasses, whose were—

 _SMASH! CRASH!_ SNAP!

"OW. _OW._ _AGH!"_

The canopy directly above Cross erupted into a medley of pained cries and snapping wood, and the young man snapped his gaze up in panic as realization hit him like a bullet. "Oh _shi—!"_

Cross saw a panicked face and then _PAIN!_

 **[...And Helheim]**

His head hurt. His gut hurt. His breath hurt. Wait, could _breath_ even hurt? And not to mention the fact that he couldn't see, his glasses were gone, and oh, did he forget to mention that he was _falling to his death!?_

The first green blur finally got within spitting distance, still blurry, a little bit more distinct, but definitely still—

"OW."

Okay, that was a branch, fuck, if the pain wasn't enough already… he bounced off that branch and concked his head on _another_ one.

" _OW."_

And bounced off that one, falling backwards out of the canopy, landing on—

" _AGH!"_

Oh fuck, his _back_! That wasn't just hitting a branch, that was falling _through_ a branch! He wasn't sure what was more broken, the branch or his back, but that didn't matter cause the ground was probably closing in, not that he could tell, and— _ **PAIN**_ **.**

Noah David, all five foot eight of him, slammed into something or other on the ground, and his world was agony. Fuck the rivets on his jeans for making the landing worse, fuck the short-sleeve button-up shirt and its inability to have fortunately caught onto a branch on the way down, and _especially_ fuck his light bomber jacket, with its myriad pockets and buttons, all pushing and pressing and slamming into him throughout the fall. His _bruises_ had bruises, he could feel them already, and even with that, he _still couldn't find his fucking_ —wait, what was that?

His hand scoured over the ground, feeling something light, some plastic, some metal, something smooth and… wait. Those were his glasses! He grabbed them, setting the half-rim frames on the bridge of his nose, and blinked in surprise as the world came back into focus once more. He could see again, see as something more than vague blobs of shape and color, and… uh.

Was he… sitting on someone? Noah looked down, and very promptly bolted upright. Yeah, he'd definitely been sitting on someone. Someone who was probably taller than him, and annoyingly, also probably weighed less than he did… damn string beans...

"Uh…" He floundered. How best to approach this… "Are… uh, are you alright?"

"I just got dropped through a tree and then got someone dropped _on_ me," the crushed stringbean wheezed venomously. "And as I am most certainly _not_ a Manderville man… no, no I am _not_ alright."

"... uhuh." He fixed the other person with a look. "But, do you do whatever a Manderville can, that's more important."

The flattened guy froze for a second before chuckling weakly and sat up, rubbing his head in an attempt to work away his half of their shared headache as he smiled at Noah. "I'm not doing the song and dance, but at least it's nice to know that I got brained by a man of culture." He held his hand out to Noah. "Jeremiah Cross, aka Xomni'to Molkoh. Nice to meet you, adventurer."

Noah was in the process of reaching his hand out when he finally parsed that last little bit. He knew that name. He knew that one very, _very_ well.

"You know, you never claimed that room I set aside in that house in Shirogane," Noah said, voice light.

Cross blinked once, twice—

" _Gorg!?"_ he choked out, shooting to his feet and grabbing Noah's shoulders, a euphoric grin on his face. And now, looking up at his companion, Noah felt short. Again.

"Xomniac, you son of a bitch." He returned the grin, a little less excited, more worried. This was… alright, this was pretty cool, he could admit. But at the same time? This… something was wrong. Something was very, _very_ wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it. What was it? What was he forgetting? "Noah, by the way. Noah David."

Cross chortled eagerly, giving Noah's shoulder a hearty shake… before suddenly freezing in place, his expression positively stricken.

 **[HELL/HELHEIM]**

"Oh fuck fuck fuckity _fuuuck,"_ Cross cursed, slamming his palm into his face with a tortured groan. "This… is not fucking good."

He looked at Noah, who was currently giving him a _look_. One of those _looks_ that implies he might be a bit crazy.

"I'm a Spacebattler."

"Right?" Noah cocked an eyebrow questioningly.

"And you're a Spacebattler."

"Obviously."

Cross jabbed his finger skywards with a snarl. "And we both just got _dropped out of the sky_ into somewhere we don't recognize, but most likely will once we get a good look around."

"... fuck." Noah pushed his glasses up to rub at his eyes. "Mother of… _ugh_! That's… bad. That's really, really bad."

"You see my point."

Noah stared skyward miserably. "Don't suppose there's any chance we could go home if we ask nice enough?"

Cross jabbed his thumb over his shoulder with a growl. "The _goddamn tree_ we just got dropped through, most likely for shits and giggles, says otherwise."

"I…" He trailed off. "Fuck. Okay, right." He paced for a moment, thinking to himself. "Alright, first thing's first, we gotta figure out where, when, and _what_ we are."

"'What'!?" Cross choked incredulously for a second before grimacing and nodding in agreement. "Ah. Right. 'What'... lemme check real quick." He took a heavy sniff of the air, and sighed in relief. "Well, you don't smell delicious, so either you're a Ghoul too, or I'm not one. I'll take either option."

"Reassuring." Noah could only roll his eyes at Cross's antics, then looked around to try (and probably fail) and orient himself. "Now come on, I think I see the jogging path this way." He turned to lead the way out of wherever in this park they were, and found the first signs of a walking path. A jogger blew past the pair, initially seeming to be completely uncaring, but a further glance showed what could only be a canister of pepper spray in her hand, her finger on top and ready to let it loose. "Alright, jogging path get. Now let's take a look around and see where… we…"

As Noah's gaze turned skyward, his voice petered out. He stood there, still as a statue, one hand frozen above his eyes as he locked onto a specific part of the skyline.

"If I follow wherever the hell you're looking, will I be mortally terrified or shocked into awe?" Cross asked tiredly, his head bowed and fingers firmly pinched over the bridge of his nose.

"Column A, column B, though column A is more about the implications rather than impending doom," Noah replied in a weak tone. "Since we don't need to get to the Pentagon right now… I'd have to say we're not in Kansas anymore." Noah pointed a finger to the sky. Curiosity nearly killed the Cross, and he couldn't help but look up and follow his finger to… a sight that _seriously_ made his gut drop.

"Noah," he responded just as weakly as Noah had, mind racing.

"Yes, Cross."

"Noah, those are the twin towers."

"Yes, Cross."

"Noah, that's the _World Trade Center_ ," Cross's eye twitched fiercely. "Well… now we know our 'where' is Central Park. And our 'when' _might_ be before the year 2001?"

"No dice, I noticed that jogger that passed us had a smartphone strapped to her belt." Noah ground out before pausing. "Oh, and pepper spray ready and waiting. Which is… just as bad, actually."

"…you're… _sure_ it wasn't a, I don't know, PDA or…?" Cross tried weakly, obviously trying for some measure of sanity.

"I know an iPhone and those cheap-as-shit earbuds when I see them." Noah shook his head, grimacing, though the color was starting to work its way back into his complexion. "At minimum, it's… let's see, 2008? Yeah, that." He sighed, thinking. "Alright… alright. What do we do now then."

 _That_ kickstarted Cross's brain. "We need to find the nearest comic shop, stat!" he exclaimed, snapping his finger skyward.

Noah _stared_.

"Uh-huh," he deadpanned, crossing his arms. "Comics?"

"Whether or not we need to worry about iminent invaders from the future or an interdimensional bitchfest depends on whether John Stewart is wearing Green or Red!" Cross asserted furiously.

"... are you nuts, or has the stress finally broken you?" Noah replied. "No, we _don't_ want to go looking for comic books. We want a fucking _newspaper_."

"I— _grgh…"_ Cross bit back whatever he was going to say with a growl, and took a second to calm down. "Whether the heroic Lantern Corps is Red or Lantern will tell us whether or not we're in Fringe."

"And a newspaper gives us date, location, and _setting-specific_ current events. If we want to get our bearings, that's a _far_ better plan of attack than trying to cross possibilities off of a list one by one," Noah asserted. "Do you _really_ want to go listing settings we _could_ be in, or would you rather just find a newspaper stand, probably get a free newspaper, and _probably_ know for certain?"

"...mph," Cross heaved a sigh as he calmed down a bit and scratched behind his head. "Just acknowledge that your plan has just as many issues because a newspaper might _not_ have any specific details and could just show the normal news for a world that's not post-9/11, if only because of an ongoing Masquerade or something?"

"This would _still_ let us cross off any settings that _do_ have a 'Masquerade' from the list!" Noah all but yelled. "Fucking—I'm done arguing about this. I'm going to find a newspaper! Feel free to join me." He shook his head, mumbling under his breath about everything and nothing all at once, and hastened his pace down the walking path.

Cross stared at Noah irritably for a second before walking behind him, scowling as he kept his arms crossed behind his head. "Doing this because I want to, not because you told me to."

"Same result, so whatever."

The two finally seemed to make some headway out of the park, with the outer edges of what they'd come to realize could only be Central Park coming into view and giving way to the madhouse that was New York City's surface streets. Cars honked, pedestrians hurried, taxis nearly ran people over… it was definitely New York, New York. Early morning New York, but still.

They passed more than a few other pedestrians on the way in, an odd profusion of pedestrians passing by them, most of them holding and tapping away at a cellphone in their hands.

"Definitely smartphone era," Noah mused, trying not to bristle at the latest suspicious side-eye from a passerby. "Might be the one flaw in this plan, actually _finding_ a physical newspaper box. You see one?"

"No, but we can find a corner store, ask them if they know where the nearest one is…" Cross frowned and looked himself over for a bit before grimacing. "Aaaand probably ask if we can use their bathroom to clean up and get the leaves off of ourselves so that we don't look like we slept in the park anymore and stop getting looked at like we're gutter trash."

"So when you say corner store," Noah hummed, pointing. "Would you mean… I don't know, that?" Cross followed his finger, and lo and behold, there it was: a convenience store. Cigarette adverts, junk food in the windows…

And a newspaper box out front, close enough to the hotdog stand for an easy source of napkins.

"...well, only one thing to do now," Cross declared.

"Buy a newspaper?"

"Weeeell… pray that our money's still good first, then buy it, but yes."

"Sounds good," Noah said, pulling his wallet out of his pocket, glad it had managed to go with him in transit. He reached in, fished out a single, and traded it to the hotdog vendor for coins. Then, jingly-jangly currency in hand, he popped a quarter into the newspaper box and grabbed one out, then flipped the front page open. "Hey, Cross!"

"Yeah?" Cross walked up next to Noah, looking over Noah's much shorter shoulder. Noah turned, frowned slightly, and pointed at the headline image on the front page.

Spandex. Flyer in spandex, zooming across the skyline.

"...well _fuck,"_ Cross hissed tersely, cupping his chin. "Superhero world. On the one hand, drama and convoluted plots…" he then shrugged with an indifferent sigh. "On the other, power levels that aren't as BS as anime and Death is Cheap is in effect. So that's nice."

"No," Noah interrupted, hands crumpling the newspaper where he held it. "No, it's _not_ nice, because the drama and plots are up to eleven and death is _not_ cheap." He grabbed the paper by the top and turned it around to show Cross, finger pointed squarely at the caption beneath the front page image.

 _Legend flying back to Protectorate National HQ after an encounter with the Adepts, 9.11.2007_

"This isn't just any supers world." Noah declared, his voice devoid of all emotion. "This is _Worm_."

It took a second for the appropriate neurons to fire, but once they did, Cross's eyes _slowly_ widened. "... Please." Cross whimpered, his tone pleading. "Please, _please_ tell me I just suffered a momentary stroke and that I just hallucinated you saying that which you absolutely, totally, _did not_ in any way actually say."

"...Worm," Noah repeated.

Cross stared at him blankly for almost a full minute. Then he nodded, more to himself than Noah, turned away, and walked down the block a bit before turning into the nearest alley. Ten seconds later…

" _EEEEEAAAAARGH!"_

An ear-rending scream of equal parts terror and outrage erupted, sending a few stray pigeons flying for their ratty lives.

Noah jumped and looked around, worried that they'd attract attention… but everybody seemed to be ignoring them. People seamlessly weaved around the two of them, and on an urge Noah moved to intercept the next pedestrian, a woman in fine businesswear, seemingly teetering on what he could only assume were higher than three-inch heels. Despite her fancy footwear, she effortlessly maneuvered around him, not even looking up from the cellphone in her hand as she did so.

"Cross?" He called.

"Back," Cross greeted casually as he walked back, waving casually. "Shockingly enough, that actually made me feel a lot better. You should try it, really helps expunge the initial shock of how _fucked_ we are."

"Good, cause something weird's going on here!" To demonstrate, Noah stepped into another pedestrian's path, and didn't even bother to watch as the man took the most efficient distance around his spread-eagle stance. "Is it just me, or does this feel like I'm Imp all of a sudden?"

"Uhh…" Cross blinked dumbly at the display… and then stilled fiercely. "Only if Imp's somehow gotten her hands on a TARDIS."

"What are you—?"

" _Gimme,"_ Cross snatched the paper from Noah's hand and pointed at a particular article in the middle of the paper's folds. "Call me crazy, but does _this_ look a little specific to you?"

Noah looked at the newspaper, eyes locking firmly onto the words printed on the page.

 _ **LOOK IN THE BOX YOU IDIOTS**_ — _**ADMIN D**_

Noah looked up to see Cross pointing at the box, mouth agape. He turned to look… and there, atop the stack of newspapers, sat a pair of fruits.

A pair of off-color fruits. Bright red skin glimmering on the surface of the normally yellow starfruit, and blue staining the nominally crimson dragonfruit. But that wasn't why the two stared so intently. That wasn't the reason why at all.

They were staring because of what was giving them such a hard time in their staring.

The fact that both fruits were covered in patterns of swirls. Swirls that seemed to shift every other second, and who all but forced their eyes to slide off of them whenever they tried to follow them to a start or an end. Swirls that denoted both of the odd, _odd_ fruits as one thing and one thing only.

"Cross?" Noah whispered.

Cross swallowed heavily. "Yeah, Noah?"

"Please tell me that I'm not seeing what I think I am." Noah breathed out shakily, taking a step towards the newspaper stand like it was going to bite him. Or like the fruits sitting inside it were.

"...think hard, Noah," Cross stated slowly, mirroring the action as he leaned towards the box. "Do you _seriously_ want me to tell you that you're _not_ seeing what is most certainly our one, and _only_ , hope of making half a difference in this shithole of shitholes _without_ going through world-shattering, literally _mind-breaking_ trauma? A hope that will instead will put us on an even playing field at the low, low, _so fucking low_ cost of our ability to swim? Is that _really_ what you want me to say?"

Noah didn't have an answer to that. He reached into the newspaper box and grabbed both fruits. The feel of their ever-shifting, spiralling flesh beneath his fingers was… it was _wrong_. It felt like something that should have been growing on the kelp down near R'lyeh, if he had to be completely honest. But then there was the way the two fruits differed. Despite sharing the same texture, which really shouldn't have been possible given that they were _two different fruits_ , they each had a temperature to them.

The 'starfruit' was _scalding_ , so hot that he could barely hold onto it without burning his hand. The 'dragonfruit', on the other hand, felt like an ice cube without the slipperiness. It didn't make sense. Everything in his (albeit limited) knowledge of Devil Fruits was _screaming_ at him that _this is not how they worked_. Unless…

Unless it was to make a choice. Hot or cold.

"I…" Noah floundered, looking at his companion. "Cross, this one is burning hot," he lifted the starfruit. "And this one," he said, hefting the dragonfruit, "this one is freezing. That's not _supposed_ to happen, is it?"

Cross looked up at him in confusion. "Cooonsidering how Kaku and Kalifa ate Giraffe and Bubbles without any idea what they were swallowing, _hell no,"_ he ran his fingers through his hair with an aggravated growl. "In case it weren't obvious enough already, there's something fucky going on here, and I'd guess it has something to do with whoever or _what_ ever dropped us here! Meaning that this could royally fuck us up…"

"...or?" Noah completed for him uncertainly.

" _Or,"_ Cross concurred, shaking his head with a scowl. "This was the only option the thing could think of to give us a fighting chance and be a little more entertaining. Either way… even with how this nag is obviously made of wood, I suppose it's better we _not_ pry this gift horse's mouth open just to take a look."

"Alright… alright." Noah held the two fruits out. "We've got hot and cold. I honestly don't know which would be what, you probably know more about these damn fruits than I ever will. So, fuck it. I'll leave the choice up to you: hot or cold?"

Cross's eyes snapped intently between the two open-ended Faustian bargains his friend was holding, and he chewed heavily on his thumb as he thought. "Well, normally I play Paragon for life, but…" he slowly held his hand out. "There has always been one phrase that's stuck with me. 'Half as long'…"

Noah tossed him the searing red starfruit with a nod, even as he eyed the frosty dragonfruit he held onto. "Let's just hope we can manage at least half more as bright." He then glanced around carefully, noting that the crowd was _still_ swerving around them rather reliably. "So, should we just… I dunno. Eat them here? Seems to be no issue with people hitting us." He frowned as somebody he expected to collide with him turned on a dime in a decidedly uncanny fashion. "Even when there really _should_ be…"

"We might have been ignored so far, but I'd rather not push our luck," Cross said, frowning at the fruit trying to burn a hole in his hand. "I mean, these _are_ Devil Fruits. There is an existing, non-zero chance that one of us might accidentally turn into a sabertooth tiger. And that means attention and Protectorate and possibly getting shanghai'd and a whole _shitstorm that I just do not want to be a part of._ "

"... _right,_ " Noah groaned, pushing up his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Forgot, Devil Fruits are fucky as all hell. Alright, let's find us a dark alley and hope whatever funny business has been helping us decides to stick around long enough to…" He shuddered. " _Eat_ this thing."

"Believe me, I'm not looking forward to it any more than you are," Cross admitted, starting to toss his fruit from hand to hand as the two started moving. "I'm really not."

"... yeah. I believe you." Noah shrugged, looking around. "A few more blocks from Central Park should do it, first alley we find. This thing's getting uncomfortable to hold."

The two of them shared a nod of agreement and got to looking for a convenient spot in which to horribly murder their taste buds. A few blocks later and Cross found it first: a mostly deserted alleyway with both a dumpster and an overturned trash bin, laying on its side and pushed up against the wall. There was just enough room in the alley for a taxi to go past, and enough room behind the dumpster to stay out of sight from the street.

"So, how do we do this?" Noah asked, juggling the fruit from hand to hand. "We only need to do one bite, right? That's it? And then we can just… I dunno, crush the rest into a fine paste and scrape it up into the dumpster?"

Cross gave Noah a flat, decidedly _unimpressed_ stare. "Aaaand then Contessa swings around the NYC municipal dump anywhere from a few seconds to a few years from now, picks up two samples of seemingly _random_ paste, drops them with Blasto, and he does _who-knows-what_ with them. And then, if we're lucky _,_ we deal with a small army of mooks apiece with black horns and knockoffs of whatever powers we get. If we're _lucky."_

Noah stared right back. "Was the sarcasm really necessary."

"It both helps me calm my nerves, and distracts me from both the no-win situation we're in and the potential WMD I hold in the palm of my hand," Cross deadpanned.

"I think you mean _guaranteed_ WMD," Noah rebutted. "There are no weak Devil Fruits, remember?" He groaned, looking at the fruit in his hand. "Alright. Eat the whole thing. Too big for one go, gonna have to… power through." He looked at Cross. "This is gonna suck. On three?"

Cross held his fruit away from himself with a grimace. "If _only_ because if one of us goes before the other, our reaction will _definitely_ put the other off. So… _one-two—!"_

And with such synchronicity they might as well have practiced it, the two sank their teeth into their Devil Fruits at the same time and secured their fates.

Noah and Cross struggled. They bit in like men possessed, chewed with the fervor of professional eaters, but when it came time to swallow, they practically choked on sawdust. Ultimately, they managed to force the semi-physical sludge to slide down their gullets… and then two seconds later—

" _GURGH!"/"HURK!"_

Said sludge came back _up_ their gullets. _Violently._

" _Oh-sweet-Christ-on-a-pikestaff!"_ Cross wheezed, gasping desperately as he recovered from splattering the alley's pavement with a fresh coat of vomit. "That shit tasted like chestnuts _roasting in Satan's diarrhea-caked asscrack!"_

"Oh holy gods above, whichever of you are listening, please doHURK!" Noah dry-heaved again, but there was nothing left in his stomach to come out. "It's like squid innards stewed in crotch rot, left to steep in the Death Star's trash compactor! _I didn't even know stenches could have a flavor before this_."

"Yeah?" Cross wheezed before giving him a miserable stare. "Well I can top the horror we just experienced with something even worse."

"What could _possibly_ be—?"

"We still need to eat the rest."

It was a _damn_ good thing the two were being perpetually ignored by the local populace, because otherwise they would have served an almost indefinite amount of time in custody for the slew of verbal filth that spewed forth.

 **[==V==]**

Half an hour of intestinal misery later, Cross and Noah were only just barely conscious, the alleyway decorated with a brand new coat of paint from their… _distress_.

"Alright," Noah groaned. "I will never, ever, _ever_ taste something that disgusting, ever again. Every nasty thing I've ever eaten pales in comparison to that… _that_." He pushed himself upright from where he'd fallen against the side of the dumpster, groaning as he did. "God, I can still somewhat _taste_ it in my mouth. I need a _drink_."

"Lucky you, you're not the one who doesn't drink booze on principal…" Cross murmured, still weakly coughing from the unexpected exertion of fighting his own attempts to vomit back down. He leaned his head back against the wall with a miserable groan. "Well, fuck it, might as well see what we bought using our stomach acid and dignity…" he stayed still for a second before starting to massage the bridge of his nose with an aggravated hiss. "IIII don't suppose _you_ feel any different either, do you?"

"Not really," Noah said, flexing. "I don't feel any urge to go swimming in a pool, but that's kinda obvious, given… well." He waved at the remnants of their stomach acid, plastered along the alley floor. "I guess it's a bit of trial and—" A drop of water from above fell on Cross's forehead, and from Noah's perspective, it hissed and spat the instant it touched him. "Jesus mother of—are you okay!?"

"What the fuck was that!?" Cross bolted upright, frantically swiping his hand on his forehead. "Acid!? Who the hell just drops acid out of… a… huh." No matter where his fingers probed, there was nothing. No burn, no damage, no nothing. Not even a sign of any water, either.

Cross looked at Noah. Noah looked back at Cross.

"You don't think…?" Noah trailed off, looking from Cross's not-wet forehead, to the trace amounts of water on the floor of the alleyway that _hadn't_ originated from the pair's bodies.

"Devil Fruits, you haven't cared about clothes before, don't you fucking dare start now…" Cross muttered to himself, _slowly_ inching towards the puddle. With immense trepidation, he lifted his foot and _slowly_ pressed the toe of his shoe into the puddle… and straight-up _gaped_ as the puddle pretty much _literally_ exploded beneath his foot, the water momentarily bubbling and roiling as much as that little liquid could before ultimately, the whole thing burst into a roiling cloud of—

" _Steam…"_ Cross breathed in awe, watching the very same, newly-evaporated gas flow around his hands as he trailed his fingers through the stuff. "I… can flash-boil liquids and make them explode into steam! I must have eaten the Steam-Steam Fruit!"

Noah looked at the suddenly expanding cloud of water vapor. He remembered the feel of the fruits in his hands; Cross's burning hot… his own cold. _Ice_ -cold. WIth some measure of trepidation, he reached out to the cloud of water vapor.

And when his fingers touched the steadily thinning mist, it burned like all hell… for _one_ second before it _froze_. The mist congealed in an instant into a thin, wispy cloud of ice. It fell to the ground, shattering instantly, and the fragments that landed on Cross flash-boiled back into steam.

"Y-you have to be— _the Ice-Ice?"_ Noah asked himself numbly, thinking aloud. "No, even as intuitive as Devil Fruits are, I'd _definitely_ be able to tell if I was a Logia, and my body doesn't _feel_ any different." He looked to the remaining puddle in the alley, the one Cross hadn't just vaporized, and reached a hand out.

Where his fingers brushed the water, the liquid stilled, crystalline structures erupting in fractal patterns as the puddle solidified into ice, faint wisps of ultrathin ice spreading from the puddle as his touch spread to what little water had seeped into the pavement.

"So…" Cross whistled as he looked over Noah's shoulder. "A Paramecia version? What, Freeze-Freeze?"

"No, that's… not quite right." Noticing where some water continued to drip into the alleyway from a gutter above, Noah put his hand into the path of the water. Where it hit, it continued to try and drip further for a second before freezing into a small little icicle, hanging from his fingertip. "Feels less like a snap freeze. Almost…" He searched for a word. "I guess it looks like it's frosted?"

"Frost-Frost Fruit!" Cross exclaimed. "We'll call it the Frost-Frost Fruit!"

Noah only half-listened, still playing with the water droplets as they landed on his hand. "So, powers. Serious powers." He looked to Cross. "First thing's first."

Cross cocked his head inquisitively. "Yeah?"

"We need to get a few _gallons_ of water so we can test the ever-loving fuck out of these things before we become either statistics or stereotypes." He paused a second. "Oh. And I'm probably going to drink one of those gallons first."

"We'll get one apiece," Cross assured him, wincing as he massaged his throat. "Seriously, I swear I'm going to gargle with my whole esophagus…" the blonde then paused and tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Alright, I think I've got a plan: we go back to that corner store where we got the paper, get our gallons of mouthwash, and then we go back to Central Park and find a bench where we can drink and talk in peace."

Noah boggled at the blonde. "You want to go _back?"_

"I'll spare you the 'I just want to go home' bit in favor of more practical concerns: we're both exhausted physically and mentally." Cross shook his head in a clear display of his words. "So, for the moment, what I want is to find somewhere where we can sit down and catch our breath that _isn't_ in a dank alleyway covered with our own vomit." Cross patted his hand on his fellow Ability User's shoulder. "A motion I imagine you can second with gusto."

"That part you didn't even have to ask. Come on." Noah started walking, fishing his wallet back out of his pocket. "Figure my money worked once already."

"Plus I live on plastic and I'd rather not risk _that_ yet, so for now, you're payrolling us."

" _Damn it!"_

 **[==V==]**

It didn't take them long to acquire four gallons of water at the corner store ("The water's out in our apartment," Cross explained as they hefted a two-gallon jug apiece, "not sure how long before it's back either!"). It did take a bit longer to lug that water back into Central Park, and then to what at least _felt_ out of the way enough that a passerby wouldn't feel inclined to listen in… or a certain would-be benevolent draconic overlord wouldn't be able to catch sight of them through a security camera.

"Alright," Noah started, cracking the seal on his two-gallon jug. "So, where do you want to start?"

"Honestly…" Cross scratched his chin thoughtfully as he swirled his water around in its jug. "I say we start with the most concrete, critical and relevant fact about this whole thing: it is, at this very moment, literally us against the world. So," he pointed his finger skyward. "No division, no ulterior motives, no keeping secrets for someone's own good unless there is a _literal_ and immediate taboo on that intel. We do this together…" Cross grimaced as a shudder wracked him. "Or we end up in situations where we are praying for death."

"Makes sense…" Noah held up his forearm to Cross. "Partners?"

"Mmm… if it's not too much trouble…" Cross grinned sheepishly as he knocked his forearm against his compatriots. "Brothers instead? If only because I wouldn't mind having one I don't hate."

Noah froze for a moment, almost to think better of it. His own brother… his own brother wasn't here. He was back home, or at work, elsewhere. Not _here_. But if his twin wasn't here, then…

He smirked.

"Guess I get to be an older brother for once," he said, knocking his forearm back against Cross's again. "Now?" He raised his water jug. "Cheers!"

"Agreed!" Cross chuckled as he hefted his own jug as much as his relative lack of muscles allowed, and the two took deep pulls from their drinks. A moment later and they stopped, the acrid burning from the constant vomit finally fading away with the soothing balm of wonderful, delicious water.

"You ever notice how when you're thirsty, water tastes so much better?" Noah remarked.

"And exhaustion just makes it allll the sweeter," Cross chuckled in agreement, heaving a sigh of relief as he relaxed on the bench. He then donned a scowl. "Though, unfortunately, while relaxing is nice, we're still here for business, so let's get to it," he raised a quartet of fingers and started ticking them off one by one.

"Let's recap: We have where and when, we have a pretty good guess on why—no matter how much it suck ass—and we've at least we've gotten a pair of blunt instruments that we can use to start refining a how. Only question left now…" Cross clamped his fist shut and knocked his knuckles against his brow with a growl. "Is _what the fuck_ we do now."

"It's simple," Noah said, steepling his fingers. "Stop Scion, knock some common sense into this dimension, and save the goddamn world." He smirked. "Not necessarily in that order."

"..." Cross was pointedly silent for a bit, taking a _deep_ chug from his jug before suddenly slamming it down with an almost manic grin. "Fuck it, got nothing better to do, so why not! Let's go out there and be goddamn heroes!" he exclaimed, his demeanor ecstatic… before flipping right back to dour. "Though in that case we need to get a more concrete 'how' and chip out a more immediate answer to 'what the fuck we do _now'_."

"Well…" Noah drew out slowly, staring skywards as he thought things over. "If the date's anything to go by, Emma probably hasn't even _met_ Sophia yet…" Noah shook his head. "I hate to say this, but it's probably best we let that run its course. Heartless as it might sound, the world needs Skitter, and we can pick up the pieces after. But too many important things came from Skitter's existence to just… stop it."

"Sucks like hell, but agreed," Cross concurred with a solemn nod.

"Besides." Noah pointed at the 'sell-by' date on his water jug. "We still have three and a half years or so, _minimum_. In the meantime, what other options do we have?

"Undersiders are a dead end," Cross picked back up, waving his hand in clear dismissal, "and don't exist yet either. Taking Coil head on with anything less than a cruise missile is suicide. And no matter what anyone says, I consider canon the 'bad ending'. Plus…" he scowled and jabbed his thumb downwards. "Gun to her head or not, it's fact that Lisa _is_ a bit of a bitch."

"Lisa Wilbourne, yes; Sarah Livsey, no."

"Semantics."

"As for the other options in the Bay proper…" Noah thought for a second, taking another swig. "Protectorate's right out, even before considering what's behind them."

"Mm…" Cross hummed into his own jug as he guzzled his water before scowling as he huffed out a heavy breath. "Much as their message is right and I'm all for forgoing the shitstorm that is a secret identity, New Wave might be a family of paras, but they're just a _grab-bag_ of issues. And I'd _really_ rather not go up against Carol 'sins of the father' Dallon without a _big_ stick backing me up."

"Even if we could join Cau—" Noah froze, suddenly looking all around them. The lack of suddenly-appearing rectangular portals, and no fedora-wearing Mediterranean women, let him relax again. "— _Them_ , without one of us getting a bullet in the head, I bet you they'd _still_ fuck up even knowing what we know." Noah leaned back, swishing the water in his jug before taking another gulp. "So if we're _not_ going for the Protectorate, and _not_ other independent heroes, and the Bay itself is an absolute clusterfuck on the _best_ of days…"

Cross spent almost a full minute rapping his fingers on his jug before slowly looking up and holding out his jug. "Go indie and make our own organization?" He offered tentatively.

Noah scoffed, knocking his own jug against Cross'. "Only if there's blackjack and hookers!"

"Hell _yes_ , with blackjack and hookers!" Cross cackled, joining Noah in knocking back his drink.

"Pah…" Noah sighed as he set his jug back down. "Alright then, let's see…" he started to count off on his fingers. "Organization. One that can affect the _world._ We need money, we need some way to establish our reputation, we need equipment, we need practice, and we need to train. We _want_ a sponsor, we _want_ a skilled trainer, and we _want_ legitimacy."

"Nonono," Cross hissed, hastily shooting upright and snapping a sidelong glare at his new bro. "We _need_ legitimacy. Remember, Cauldron and the Protectorate have an official/unofficial no-tolerance policy on anyone doing superheroing that isn't them. If they can find an opening, they'll either break our good name or break our necks without a second thought. So we're either unassailable… or we're _fucked."_

"... didn't think of that," Noah admitted sheepishly. "First thing's first though: none of this matters if we can't _afford_ it, and none of _that_ matters if we can be replaced with someone else. So first thing's first and second thing's next. And right now, our 'first' is we need to see if there's any money available to us, and then we need to _practice_." He fished his wallet out of his pocket, and shook it. "I've probably got another fifty cash in here, but that's nowhere near…" He paused, thinking for a moment. Then Noah opened up his wallet, pulled out his bank card… and looked at Cross. "You don't think…?"

Cross hummed thoughtfully, withdrawing his own wallet and indicating his own debit card. "Well, the omni-bitch-and-or-bastard who landed us here already gave us one windfall, and I doubt she'd want to just see us starve in the streets… so unless you want to get a job as a living cooling unit, let's find us an ATM…" he trailed off for a few seconds as he tipped up his jug and started draining what remained of the water in the container, before upending the empty bottle and shaking out the last few drops with a sigh. "After we find a faucet, though, because _man_ did that run out fast."

Noah tipped his own jug and drained that too, patting out the remaining water. "Yeah, it really—wait." He looked at his jug, then to Cross, then to Cross's jug, then to Cross's _gut_ , then to _his_ gut, then back to the jug. "We just guzzled two _gallons_ of water apiece. And our stomachs aren't distended, we don't feel bloated…" He looked back at Cross again, perplexed. "And I _still_ feel a little thirsty."

"Eh? Well yeah, so do I, I just said—!" Cross's chiding halted mid-sentence as he picked up on the same discrepancy his friend had pointed out, and it was with more than a little shock that he started to pat down his own gut. "Wait, hang on, that doesn't make any sense! These things are bigger than our _stomachs!_ What, did the water just vanish into thin air or—?!"

The second the mere _concept_ of 'air' flit through Cross's brain, both he and Noah were shocked into silence by an incredible, _impossible_ phenomenon: smoke suddenly started wafting from Cross's flailing hands… or rather, _steam_.

"Whoa…" Noah breathed numbly. "Is that—?"

Cross raised and stared at his steaming palms in awe, and when the steam started to fade again, he hastily started to concentrate on the idea of steam again, and could only gape as fresh puffs of the heated gas expelled themselves from his hands. "...dude," he whispered in awe, clenching and unclenching his fingers incredulously. "I think you're gonna want to try this."

"Hell _yes_ I do," Noah breathed, extending a hand. He concentrated on the idea of his power, on the concept of just freezing water—

With a sharp _crack_ as the crystal expanded and solidified, ice erupted from the skin of Noah's outstretched hand, freezing around it like a boxer's mitt. It grew in all directions for a second before stopping, at once cubic and jagged, before a surprised flex of his knuckles cracked the incredibly fragile ice, and the shattered fragments fell to the grass below.

"Holy _shit_." He looked to Cross, letting another layer of ice crawl up on his hand before breaking it apart again. "It's not just touch. The Fruits _did_ change our bodies."

"Makes sense, DFs always operate beyond their initial appearances!" Cross giggled ecstatically, staring excitedly as he summoned forth spurts of steam from each of his fingertips in succession. "Munch-Munch gave Wapol an abyss of a stomach to go along with his iron jaws, the Sand-Sand let Crocodile dessicate things… and apparently the Steam-Steam and Frost-Frost gave _us_ internal reservoirs! We're—well," Cross winced and cocked his head to the side with a grimace. "We're a living locomotive and refrigerator respectively, but fuck it, there have been and are more ridiculous fruits out there. I'll take it."

"Huh…" Noah nodded in agreement, staring at his hand as he started to accumulate a hefty amount of frost in his palm and weighed it contemplatively. "How much do you think we can hold?"

"Weeeell," Cross made a show of scratching his chin contemplatively. "Seeing as Luffy's maximum length is 72 Gum-Gums, I'd estimate around, eh… 50 Steam-Steams and Frost-Frosts apiece?"

Noah gave Cross a decidedly flat stare as he crushed the fragile ice in his fist. "Are you actively trying to be annoying, or is smartass just your _default_?"

"Column A, column B," Cross admitted shamelessly, waving his hand in a so-so gesture. "We're already in the most grimdark hellhole there is, so if no one else is going to try to laugh, I might as well get my yucks in where I can. But ah, seriously though…" Cross shrugged helplessly. "Hell if I know. I say we just drink until we feel full, see where it gets us."

"...heh. Goddamn, that's pretty much going to be our motto, isn't it?" Noah shook his head with a chuckle as he stood up and started stretching out his sleepy joints. "'Try shit, see where it gets us'. ...well, at least it's simple, I'll give you that."

"A Steam-Man and a Frost-Man, taking on the world. And not just any world, but this world, of all worlds..." Cross favored Noah with a grin. "Come Hell or high water?"

"Nah," Noah said, grin of his own as he held up his forearm. "How about, come Hell or… Helheim."

"You know what? That _is_ better." Cross stood up and raised his own arm, his grin stretching from ear to ear. "Together 'til the end, come Hell or Helheim."

And so the two knocked their forearms together, and then grasped each other's forearms respectfully.

"Now let's get started."

 **A/N:**

 **Xomniac:** Greetings worthless pe—! IIII mean, adoring masses! 'Tis I, your most beloved and wondrous of authors, the illustrious Xomniac!

 **Gorgoneion:** And joining him is his, as you avid Worm readers might recall, is me, co-author of the now mostly-dead _Up in the Air_. Don't worry, it's only _mostly_ dead. Which means it can be brought back to life. If it were _all_ dead, then there's nothing I can do, but if it's only _mostly_?... Well. That's another situation entirely!

 **X:** Aaanyways, we come to you all—

 **G:** Y'all.

 **X:** —as I'll gladly say without the snail, _bite me—_ with a most fantastic of announcements!

 **G:** One day, I had an idea. So I went to Xom. Who then did what he does best: took my idea, let it rise until it doubled or tripled in size, and then kneaded it to shape as something far greater. What was originally a "shits and giggles" concept has instead ballooned into… THIS!

 **X:** Now, fret not, feeble-minded—! I-I-I mean, valued readers! Just because I'm collaborating with Gorgo and bringing my genius into _this_ _**ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT**_ mean that _This Bites!_ Is going anywhere. It's still my no. 1… I just couldn't help but want to write about this as well.

 **G:** And yes. I know I put my own HeroAca solo fic _Lamarckian_ on hiatus because law school. But… well. That one's coming back in a few weeks, and in the meantime… we concocted _this_ mountain of madness.

 **X:** I doubt there'll be anything close to a regular posting schedule, or hell, even a _frequent_ one… but either way, we're doing this, and that's that. So for now?

 **G:** Sit back.

 **X:** Relax.

 **Both: AND ENJOY THE SHOW!**


	2. Chapter 2

"No… no… how the _hell_ am I supposed to fit two people into two hundred square feet!? No, no, not only no but _hell_ no, that building hasn't been renovated since the twenties…"

New York apartments. They were like _shoeboxes_. No room, no amenities, no _nothing_. Just trying to cram as many people into as small a space as possible. Hell, their _hotel room_ was roomier than any of these apartments would be, and that's without adding in the fact that some of the apartments didn't have in-unit _restrooms_! What was it, a converted boarding house?

Actually, wait. Noah clicked back through the description… yup, that's exactly what it was. A converted boarding house. He sighed, pushing his glasses up so he could get at the bridge of his nose and rub his eyes. This… was _frustrating_.

Good news: their bank cards worked. All of the money that had been in his name—and all the money that was _owed_ to him—sat in an account. That meant inheritance money, Bar'Mitzvah money, graduation money (high school and undergrad), his federal retirement account, his _other_ federal retirement account, his scholarship money, and all the student loans that had been coming his way. Which added up to _a fairly decent chunk of change_!

The bad news?

 _ **THIS IS A LOAN. THE REPAYMENT PERIOD BEGINS ONE YEAR FROM… OH, THIS VERY SECOND.**_ — _ **ADMIN D**_

Nearly three hundred _thousand_ dollars to work with. And while it _should_ have been his, it wasn't now. It was just a loan. Collateral. A bond, to be repaid.

Which meant that he needed to be judicious with the funds. He needed to be miserly. He needed to be stingy.

He needed to be… _Jewish_.

"Oh, if I were a rich man," he murmured. "Tevye, you old bastard. You had one hell of a point…"

The sound of the hotel room door unlocking drew Noah's attention, but he relaxed the moment he saw that it was just Cross, carrying the pair of canvas sacks he'd taken to using to haul their mass-orders of water over his shoulders and a massive, shit-eating grin on his face.

"Got more ammo for us?" Noah inquired, not looking up from the little cheapy laptop's screen as he continued his search. Hang on, this one had potential… whoop, no, never mind, that was _not_ a part of town two white guys wanted to be in. Nothing wrong with it, just that they wouldn't be very welcome there. Point of fact, they'd be about as well-liked as a fat noble during a famine. So what next—

CLACK!

Noah's browsing was interrupted by Cross slapping his hand down on the laptop and shutting it so that he could shove his grin in the Frost-Man's face.

"Oh, quite a bit better, my friend!" Cross giggled, almost literally…no, no he was _literally_ simmering with anticipation, steam leaking off of him like a miniature geyser. Or a very hot theme park mister.

"I was working on that," Noah groused halfheartedly.

"And if the fact that you didn't clock me with this thing is anything to go by, then you were getting nowhere at lightspeed, so let's take a break and work on what _I_ just discovered instead, _hm?"_ Cross tilted his head with a hum that clearly said that Noah didn't really have much choice in the matter.

"Alright." Noah tossed the laptop onto the pillow. "I'll bite. Whatcha got."

"So!" Cross clapped his hands and righted himself contentedly, ringing his hands in eager anticipation. "Just to alleviate your concerns, first off, yes, I got us our water, and yes, I used a different store, and _yes,_ I saved the receipts. That all to your satisfaction?"

"Perfectly so, continue?"

"Well now see, the interesting part comes from right _after_ I walked out of the store, with my bags in tow! As you can see," Cross waved at the canvas he'd been hauling. "The bags are, as always, substantially heavy, so I was more focused on carrying them than where I was going… so I didn't notice I was right behind someone's car until they accidentally blasted me with their exhaust."

Noah winced. "One, yuck. Two, ow. Three, that must've stunk to high heavens."

"Yes to one and three…" Cross crossed his forearms with a bark of laugh. " _But no to two!"_

"... hold up." Noah held up his hands in the universal symbol for a time-out. "Details. Now."

"You're right, that backblast stank like the rest of this street looks… but in terms of temperatures?" Cross chopped his arms out with finality. "It. Didn't. Hurt. It was like a breeze of _normal_ air. When really, it should have been hot. _Boiling_ hot," the Steam-Man crossed his arms with a smirk. "I trust you can deduce the direction my thoughts then took?"

"Let me go get some ice." Noah stood up and started to make for the door.

Only 'started', though, as Cross stuck his hand out and caught him before he could make it more than a foot. " _Way_ ahead of you," Cross reassured him, digging through one of his bags and bringing out a zippo and a plastic cooler. "Lighter for me, dry ice for you. Let's see how much climate-based punishment we can take, shall we?"

Noah hopped up, clapped his hands, and rubbed them together in anticipation. "Well, if you insist…" He closed his eyes and held his hands out. "Hit me."

The only 'hit' he got, though, was the cooler being plopped down in his hands.

"Hey, I only know that I'm good with _heat,_ you're the one potentially going through frostbite," Cross scoffed as he started flicking his zippo's wheel. "Now grab that chunk of carbon death and potentially sear off the top layer of your palm's skin."

"Sounds about right." He sighed to himself and flipped open the cooler. Inside, a small layer of misty carbon dioxide settling on top of it, was a brick of dry ice. Like, almost literally a brick. If he'd taken this and tried to shove it into masonry, it would fit long enough to apply some mortar and lay more bricks atop the damn thing before it sublimated into nothingness. Right, he was trying to avoid doing this. Gotta do the thing. Alright… three, two, one—!

Noah's hand came into contact with the dry ice, and… nothing. Oh sure it was chilly, but it was a _nice_ chilly. Comforting, really. He grabbed the dry ice brick and popped it on the back of his neck, sighing blissfully as the chill coursed down his spine. Oh yeah, _that_ was the stuff.

"This. Is. Great!" he said, looking at Cross.

"Ditto on that, this feels _awesome!"_ Cross sighed blissfully, even as he ran his lit lighter up and down the length of his arm, with nothing more than a contented grin to show for it. "Man, I've seriously got to pick up some lighter fluid next time I go out and really light myself up! This is _cozy!"_

"Still, just for the sake of science, you gotta try this." He held the brick out to Cross and, with a nervous grimace, Cross held his own lighter in turn, and the two started to hold out their fingers towards each others' elements.

As Noah's finger approached the flame, he could _feel_ the heat (too hot _too hot TOO HOT_ ) and before he even noticed what was happening, a small shell of ice sprung up around the tip, dousing the flame before it could begin to scorch him.

" _Sunnova—!"_ Cross hissed in turn, jerking his finger back and waving it out with a frantic blast of steam before he could even make contact with the actual ice. "How are you holding that thing?! I can barely feel my fingertip!"

"Uh… you may need to turn the lighter on again." Noah pulled his finger back and bent it, letting the ice crumble away from the tip. "I didn't even notice. I just… I dunno. I saw the fire, and I just _did not want it near me_."

"Son of a—you're telling me we have opposing elemental phobias?!" Cross demanded, steam starting to roil off him irritably. "Damn it, Blue Seas, can't you give us _one_ blessing that doesn't double as a curse?"

"Nope." Noah shrugged, tossing the brick of dry ice up and down as it slowly sublimated away. "Because being us is suffering in some way."

"Hilarious," Cross scoffed, digging out a water jug from his sack and starting to warm it with a palmful of steam as he sat on his bed. "Well, anyways, now that we've figured all that out, let's get down to business. I've got intel, you've got intel, let's mix it up."

Noah nodded in agreement as he sat down as well and started to chill his water. "Agreed. Feed me knowledge, and I will give you analyses."

And so they began to download their accumulated knowledge.

 **[==V==]**

Over the course of the past week, Noah and Cross had been accumulating as much data on recent parahuman activity and Earth Bet in general as they tried to get a better grasp on their current situation.

"Alright, major groups and cities first." Noah unfurled the map Cross had bought and spread it out on the table, a pad of sticky notes in his right hand, a pen in his left. "Teeth and Accord in Boston, ABB and Empire in Brockton, Adepts here in the Big Apple, Elite may as well have staked a claim on the whole West Coast at this point, Fallen down south…" he listed off as he stuck notes thusly labeled on the map. He then glanced up at Cross. "Any word on MIRIS and NEPEA-5?"

"First one's getting gutted more and more each day, second's already come and gone," Cross replied. "NEPEA-5's been around a decade, there's nothing we can do to change that without enough money to make Scrooge McDuck jealous… and even then we'd still need the devil's luck. As it is though…"

"Got it, no trips to Hollywood for a bit then. Until we have the firepower to make a difference anyway." Noah took a red pen and hash-marked the entire west side of the country. "Slaughterhouse?"

"They just lost Winter, grabbed Chuckles recently." Cross bowed his head sorrowfully. "They already have Riley."

Noah sighed. "Alright, so much for that one. CUI, about fifty members at the moment, and I _think_ they just lost Lung recently, so he's still heading stateside. New Wave is still a thing, Fleur is still alive, but Allfather definitely isn't. Purity is still with the Empire, so I think we can assume she doesn't break off from them until she gets pregnant, and that's not for… what, two years?"

"About," Cross agreed. "How old was Aster at the start of it all, one?"

"I _think_ so, which means that if we went to Brockton, I'd still have a massive target on my back from the second strongest Blaster in the country." Noah frowned. "We're going to have to steer well away from Brockton unless you want to go down there solo. It's not safe enough for me to go there yet… fuck."

"Fuck," Cross agreed. "Alright, uh… what next?"

"Where were the most recent Slaughterhouse and domestic Endbringer attacks, did you get that much?"

Cross sighed in relief as he took a note of his own and stuck it in the top left of the map. "Well, that was Leviathan drowning Seattle in '03, but for the Americas in general?" A new sticky slammed down onto what should have been Canada, but was instead more of the Atlantic Ocean. "Newfoundland in '05. Dragon's already spread her wings and Saint has his mitts all over her choke chain. Luckily though, in lighter news, we don't need to worry about waking up in twenty pieces…" he placed down another note in the middle of the map. "Because last sighting places the Slaughterhouse _somewhere_ in Tornado Alley. I guess Crawler wanted to test himself against a twister or something.

As for overseas, Sleeper's got a twenty-mile demilitarized zone around him, the Three Blasphemies cross borders like they're on tour, Gesselschaft and its cells are like the European equivalent of ISIS, and not only is Ash Beast fucking off somewhere in the middle of the Sahara, but the non-defunct governments have a rolling roadblock around him to keep any would-be warlords from trying to direct him anywhere. So, overall…" Cross clapped his hands with finality. "World's a shitfest, nothing new."

"Yeah, and if we want to make a splash in this shitfest, we're gonna have to go and knock somebody over." Noah sat down in the desk chair and clasped his hands together, leaning his chin on them as he looked over the map. "We have _some_ funds, but that'll quickly disappear if we aren't careful, and we need some form of revenue stream to make sure we can pay back the _fucking loan_ when it comes due." He looked at the map, breathing slowly as he contemplated.

Cross loomed over his shoulder with a pencil, and started drawing lines across the map. "A car wouldn't be too expensive, yeah? How about… I dunno, a great big road trip cross country, taking out every villain we find until we've made a name for ourselves?"

Noah shook his head. "I see a few flaws with that immediately. One, we cross jurisdictional lines to do stuff, that means the long arm of the law is after us. Which _probably_ means Legend, relativistic speeds and all. Two, it'll work for a town or three, but then it'll just be obvious unless we swap car and outfits every time, and that's just impractical and asking for us to be mobbed. Three, breakneck pace, burnout imminent. And four, how _exactly_ are we gonna get a reputation taking out D-listers? And even if we hit a few B to low-A, that's still only _local_ names." Noah erased the line and looked back at the map. "We need… a big name. Something people _know_." He paused, looking up as he tapped on Boston. "What about the Butcher?"

"Besides the fact that he/she/whatever would most likely chew us up and spit us out?" Cross asked sarcastically, before letting the snide tone drop as he shook his head. "I remember reading somewhere that the whole 'killed to killer' transfer is a fiction. In truth, it's the closest Parahuman _period._ Meaning that not only would we not solve anything, but they'd most likely find out about _us._ And trust me, letting on that we're not _actually_ parahumans?" Cross snorted. "Yeah, dissection sounds _great_. And not necessarily by the government either."

"Right. That's a no-go on Boston then, since Blasto isn't big enough and we are definitely _not_ gonna be able to stop Accord with just two people." Noah frowned and started to tick off his fingers. "We need to narrow things down by criteria first. One, bogeyman. Two, within our relative means. Not necessarily _current_ means, but something we can accomplish within the next few months, to a year at most. Three, we can't just leave a power vacuum behind, because that's just leaving things worse than when we got there." He wrote them down. "So someone people know, someone we can take, and someone we can excise without complications. Any thoughts?"

"Mmrgh…" Cross groaned with uncertainty, starting to chew on his thumb as he looked the map over. "I'm trying to think of someone, but nobody springs to mind. Honestly, if I could I'd say we go for Teacher or String Theory, but they're both— _tch!"_ Steam suddenly vented off of Cross as he went white, his nail nearly snapping as his jaw locked up.

"You have an idea?" Noah deduced.

Cross slowly looked back up at Noah, his expression painfully blank. "You're going to hate it," he informed his friend in an emotionless voice.

"...why?"

"Because it's a _bad_ idea."

Noah gave Cross the flattest look he could manage. "How bad."

Cross's expression remained blank as he turned a finger on himself. " _I_ hate it."

Noah maintained his flat stare for a bit longer before waving his hand with a defeated sigh. "...fuck it, we have nothing else, and maybe I won't hate it too. Tell me."

And so Cross told Noah his idea. It took all of half a second for Noah's expression to mirror Cross's.

"I was wrong, I hate it too."

Cross nodded in solemn solidarity. "And now, I have to say the six words I hate most of all right now."

"Which would be?"

Cross slowly leaned forwards, his eyes wide in miserable desperation. " _Do you have any better ideas?"_

Noah stared at Cross blankly for almost a full minute before slamming his head down on the map and _groaning_. "Alright, fine. Shitty idea it is, then."

Cross's head joined Noah's on the desk in short order, letting out a groan of his own. "This is gonna _suck_."

"Eeeee- _Yup."_

And with that they groaned in miserable chorus.

 **[==V==]**

"Okay, so!" Cross belted out an hour later once they'd both managed to snap out of their despair, pacing agitatedly across their room as he clenched and unclenched his hands in numb panic. "We are going on a _suicide mission._ That is a _fact_ we have determined! Our next logical course of action! Now, we just need to go about deciding _how the fuck_ we actually go about going on said, and I cannot stress this point enough, _suicide mission!_ Thoughts!?"

"Well first thing's first, you're turning the hotel room into a fucking _sauna_ ," Noah snarled as he waved his hand in front of his face and chilled the blistering fumes that came into contact with him.

Cross blinked as that statement broke through his mild panic, and it was with no small amount of surprise that he noted that yes, he'd been seeping steam behind himself as he'd walked. "I-I, that, uh… huh?" he uttered numbly.

"Sit down, have a drink, and get your head back in the game." Noah ordered tersely, pointing at his bro's bed.

Once Cross sat down and hauled his steam back from 'volcanic' to merely 'simmering' as he started to drink, the Frost-Man continued. "Think about it, man: we got ROB'd, it was _always_ a suicide mission. This just… brings it into sharp relief, if you want to be _poetic_ about it." Noah sniffed. "Which I do. Now!" He tapped the notepad next to him. "If we're going to do this, we need training, and we need gear. Training we can technically do anywhere… so long as it's somewhere where we're not likely to be scooped up by any one of the dozens of faction looking to pick up parahuman muscle, but still. For now though?" he held up his hand and solidified another chunk of the balmy fog in his palm. "You just _flooded_ our room with steam because you freaked out a bit."

" _Suicide mission!"_ Cross hissed, a fresh blast of steam following the statement.

" _Stow it!"_ Noah snapped right back with a frozen cloud of his own that immediately fell to the floor. "We. Need. Control. We have no idea what we're doing, and until we can figure out just what we're capable of, we're as much a threat to ourselves as we are to anyone else. Understand?"

The Steam-Man stared at him blankly for a bit, but ultimately, Cross took a deep breath and exhaled a stream of steam as he stopped the leaking from the rest of his body. "Okay… okay. Sorry about that, it's just…"

"I know." Noah put a hand on Cross's shoulder, and sat him down on the edge of the hotel bed. "Just, think of it like… like the Normandy."

Cross gave him a funny look. "D-Day?"

Noah smirked a bit. "SR-2."

 _That_ got a surprised snort out of Cross, but that then transitioned to a bark of laughter. "Git gud! Fine, fuck it! You've successfully awakened my inner gamer, my head's back on straight." He started rubbing his hands eagerly. "So! How we do?"

"Get off our asses and _practice_. We've got _Devil Fruits_ , Cross!" Noah held up his hands, rime coating his palms. "We haven't even scratched the _surface_ of what we're capable of, and if what we've seen so far is any hint, there is some _serious_ potential under there. Like… uh." Noah snapped his fingers. "Like… fuck, what was it…"

"Luffy and pretty much _anything_ he does?" Cross offered with a snicker.

"Fair enough," Noah nodded as he conceded the point. "Point is, we need to grasp our powers, and _break them_ like a party of professional D&Ders in a good campaign. We have the most munchkin-friendly powers in anime outside of Stands, so we need to get our asses in gear and _munchkin."_

Cross slowly tilted his head to the side. "Did… did you just use 'munchkin' as a _verb_?"

"Yes," Noah said with a perfectly straight face. "You're goddamn right I did. Now be a nice subject and do the verb."

"Alright, alright," Cross nodded, slowly laying back against the wall behind the top of his bed. He raised his hand in front of his face and started letting out a relatively small spout of steam from his palm. "Where… to…" he frowned as a thought struck him, and cut off the steam so he could wiggle his fingers thoughtfully. "Alright, that's as good a place as any."

Cross closed his fist and pointed his index finger up. With a little concentration, steam started whistling out the tip of the digit. Then, Cross opened his fist and pointed all his fingers upwards, and he started blowing steam from each of his fingertips one after another.

The Steam-man grinned successfully. "Alright! Looks like hyper-precision is a go-go—GAH!" Cross cut himself off with a wince when his entire palm started blasting again, and hastily cut it off. "Alright, correction, precision with concentration only. I'll need to practice that."

"Yes, yes you will, Stanley Steamer. Now let somebody else try something out." Noah quirked an eyebrow. "Or, you know. Specifically try to point that in one direction. Like, say, the air vent in the bathroom."

"Wup, right, sorry," Cross winced, standing and walking for the restroom… before pausing in the doorway as a thought struck him. "Wait, direction—!" he raised his palm and loosed another vent of steam. Then that vent started moving across Cross's body, the steam migrating up Cross's arm, over his shoulders and down into his opposite hand. "HA! Suh-weet!"

"What did I _just_ say about steaming up the room!?" Noah yelled out, raining on Cross's parade again… literally this time as he iced the cloud of haze that had filled the room, slamming the mass of snow on Cross's head.

"GAH! DICK!" Cross yelped, wincing as he blasted the snow off with a blast of steam from his shoulders before ramming the switch for the restroom vent. He shivered as he walked back to his bed. "Alright, alright, truce. Now, anything from you?"

"Yeah, actually." Noah went into the restroom and filled a cup with tap water, which he then lifted and began to slowly pour out into the sink. He brought one finger to the small stream of water leaking out, and after a moment's hesitation, plunged it into the stream.

The water he touched froze. The rest of the water in the cup froze.

And then the cup shattered, because the water froze so instantaneously that it expanded _out_ instead of _up_.

" _Shit_!" Noah yelled, flinching away from the frag grenade he'd accidentally turned the cheap glass cup into. "Too fast, too fast!"

"Nooo, not fast enough!" Cross cackled, clapping appreciatively. "Again, again!"

"No, _not_ again! Now get in here and steam up the floor so I can… huh." Noah kneeled down where he stood, and in the process, a thin layer of frost flaked off from most of his body, tinkling on the floor to mix with the glass. While that certainly wasn't helping, it did have some interesting implications. Namely?

He turned to Cross, pensive. "Was there ice on me a second ago?"

"Eh?" Cross blinked, cutting himself off mid-laugh as he looked his friend over in confusion. "Uh, no, no there… wasn't, but now you look like discount Aokiji," he leaned back and crossed his arms with a smug grin. "Guess you're as bad as I am when it comes to instinctual activation, huh?"

Noah snorted dismissively, holding up a shard of glass. "Yeah well that's a good thing because it just stopped me from becoming a sieve. _Look."_

And so Cross got up and looked… and observed with no small amount of surprise that the shard appeared to be imbedded in— "Your frost stopped the glass?"

"That 'instinctual activation' is actually 'instinctual _armor'_. And that's so damn handy I think _you_ need to work on something similar," Noah waved his hand over the floor as he composed a glove of frost over his hand. "Now, start steaming so we can get sweeping."

A minute later, the mess was cleaned up and they were sitting back down… until Noah was given pause by the sound of his shirt crackling. The Frost-man looked himself over contemplatively, and he gave Cross an intent look. "Hey, Cross, I just noticed… think you could blast some steam from your chest?"

"Eh? Yeah, sure, whatever," Cross shrugged, casually letting out a few puffs from his gut. "Why, what's the point?"

"The point is that you're actually right. I _do_ look like discount Aokiji…" Noah held up his arm, indicating his frosted over sleeve. "Clothes and all. And you just vented your steam _through_ your shirt. Good news for us, Oda's clothing-immunity is alive and well."

"Okay good, no ruining our clothes due to moisture or anything," Cross sighed in relief.

"Not what I was getting at," Noah murmured. "More, 'we can wear body armor and still use what the rest of this world would consider a Striker ability'. But still!" He held up a fist covered in hoarfrost. "Nice! Now," he laid back and waved Cross off as he started concentrating intently on his fist. "You go ahead and do whatever. I'm going to see how thick I can pack this stuff on."

"Yeah yeah, got it. Just don't complain when this place starts getting muggy again," Cross scoffed as he started letting out puffs of steam from his hand. He examined the venting vapor thoughtfully for a bit before cocking his eyebrow as a thought hit him. "Actually, make that _really_ muggy, because you're actually onto something. I've only ever turned the dial _down._ Let's see how high this can go."

So saying, Cross pointed his hand at the wall, scrunched his face up in concentration, envisioned throwing a lever as far as it could go—

 _FWOOM!_ _ **SMASH!**_

"GYAH!"

And then promptly yelped in both panic and pain alike when things suddenly got really fucking blurry and ended with his head head suddenly hurting like hell.

"A-ha- _haow…"_ Cross moaned, bringing up a hand to poke at the throbbing at the rear of his skull. "What… the fuck just—?"

"Well…" Noah stood up with a laugh, pointing down where Cross _used_ to be. "You did a rather nice impression of a bottle rocket, I'll say that much. Though maybe tone it down, we can't… really… well, _shit_."

"What? What shit?" Cross looked up to see Noah pointing with each hand as the steam started to clear. He followed Noah's fingers to see… holes. Holes in the walls. Holes in the walls on _opposite_ sides of the room that _didn't belong there_. "... well, _shit_."

"Well shit, indeed." Noah dragged a hand down his face until it slid off the end of his chin, then put his glasses back on. "Looks like your steam made one of those holes and… well, _you_ literally made the other. Come on, let's pack our bags. Looks like we gotta find a new hotel."

"You just don't want to pay for damages."

"Exactly. Now get off your ass and let's _move_!"

"Ooor…" Cross waved his hand dismissively as he sat back down on his bed, wincing as he rolled his throbbing shoulders. "You could cool your jets, we hold off for a bit, and practice some more? Seeing as I doubt anyone will be around to check on us any time soon and we can bail well before then?"

Noah paused, then sank back onto his bed with a defeated sigh. "Fuck it, you got a point. But if we end up having to pay for any of this then I blame you, got it?"

"We'll leave a treasure IOU, now shaddap and practice."

Noah rolled his eyes and started to build up the frost on his fist again… then frowned when, for some reason, even though he could feel the frost building up like it was supposed to, his makeshift gauntlet didn't grow in the least.

Cross, meanwhile, was rolling his shoulder with a grumble. "Alright, note to self, don't go full blast again until you've built up some damn muscle, because the recoil on this shit is—!" Cross's voice died mid-sentence, his gaze locked on absolutely nothing as his train of thought slammed the breaks, turned 90 degrees and then blasted through the sound barrier.

Noah glanced up at his partner when he suddenly fell silent. "I trust that that's a _good_ shocked silence?"

In lieu of a verbal answer, Cross slowly raised his arm, his forearm sticking up at a right angle. He then loosed a burst of steam… and his arm snapped back as a result.

Cross slowly turned his slack expression on Noah. "I have recoil," he breathed weakly. His expression then became positively euphoric. "I have _recoil!_ I have an equal and opposite reaction to my _jetstream-grade steam!_ I can beat heads in with Newton's Third!"

Noah gave him a half-bored, half-impressed look. "Nice."

Cross's manic grin took on a fierce gleam. "You are unimpressed. That is an error. Allow me to demonstrate!" He cocked his arm back, readying himself to throw a punch.

The Frost-man immediately pegged onto his opposite's intentions, and promptly sucked in a worried breath. "No, wait, I see what you're doing but—!"

"FALCON!" Cross belted out, throwing his fist forwards in a punch as he discharged a squall of steam from his elbow—!

 _FWOOSH!_

"GWAGH!"

And then the world blurred out and everything became _PAIN_ again… only this time, Cross was dizzy as all heck, flat on his back on the floor and his head was spinning like he'd ridden in a washing machine.

"Agh…" Cross winced miserably, slowly pointing a finger in the air. "At… the risk of repeating myself… _the fuck?"_

"Don Quixote called?" Noah quipped. "He wants his windmill back."

"...at the risk… of repeating myself…"

Noah rolled his eyes with a put-upon sigh. "Throw another punch, a _normal_ one, and this time, follow the direction your elbow is pointing throughout the motion."

Cross slowly complied, weakly raising his arm to his side… and letting out an embarrassed groan as he straightened his arm out. "Fucking… well _that's_ gonna suck to fix."

"Eeyup," Noah replied, popping the 'p'. "Practice makes perfect, so better get used to it." He looked down at his own ice-encrusted hand in frustration, brow furrowed. "And now _I'm_ confused. I can _feel_ more ice under there, so why can't I _see_ it?" He tensed his jaw, tried to push _more_ ice out and—

 _CRACK!_

Noah blinked at the crack in the veritable gauntlet of ice on his hand. "How did that… oh shi—"

As it turns out, two things cannot occupy the same space. And when he tried to create even _more_ ice underneath the ice already there, well… the only way it could go was _out_.

And as it was, the crack alone wasn't enough to alleviate the pressure the topmost layer was under. It was with a resounding crack that the ice shattered into dozens of pieces, flying out with surprising speed, but very little force due to how relatively light said ice was at the time of detonation. And while the blast _did_ knock Noah on his ass from the shock, an instinctive layer of frost prevented him from being perforated… though the same could not be said of the room's already-ruined walls.

"The _fuck_ was that!?" Cross demanded as he crawled out from under his bed, pointing an accusatory finger at Noah.

"... oops?" Noah offered with a sheepish smile as he slowly got to his feet.

"Oops? _Oops_!? That was _not_ an 'oops', that was a shrapnel bomb!"

"...regenerative armor with a shrapnel mod?"

" _...fuuuck_ that is some badass Borderlands shit," Cross admitted with a defeated sigh, shaking his head before holding his hand out to Noah with a grin. "Well don't just stand there, help me up and throw a snowball at me so I can try using my steam as a flame-mod shield!"

"Well that sounds like a damn good time." Noah reached out to grab a hold of Cross's arm.

They regretted the action almost instantly, on account of how at the time both had had their powers running at full blast.

The effects were, to be concise…

 _ **KRAK-THOOM!**_

 **SMASH!**

 _Dramatic._

Once more everything became a painful, _painful_ blur for the two, and when they recovered their wits, they realized that things were… not good. Their room, to put it generously, looked like a bomb had gone off in it. And not a metaphorical 'clothes everywhere, food strewn about' after-party mess bomb, but a literal C4 and shrapnel bomb. The beds were devastated, the walls and ceiling were badly damaged, and a pipe had almost certainly burst in the bathroom.

Miraculously, the Devil Fruit Users were unharmed… or at least, as 'unharmed' as could be allowed when one was halfway embedded in a wall. As it was, the pair were dazed, aching, and found that their right arms were positively _killing them_.

Slowly regaining his wits, wits, Noah worked his non-dead arm out of the drywall and shakily held up a finger. "So… three things…" he wheezed miserably. "Number one… our abilities _do not_ play nice together."

"No shit, Sherlock?" Cross spat… or would have spat if his mouth didn't feel like it was stuffed with cotton, meaning the best he could do was moan.

Noah took that as an indication of understanding, and raised a second finger. "Number two… we _desperately_ need to find a real place to train our powers… and by 'we', I mean the one who actually walks outside, meaning 'you'."

"' _Uck 'oo…"_

"And number three… we need to get the fuck out of this burrow before the manager or the Protectorate finds us. Clear?"

" _Gweehhh…"_

"Perfect."

 **[==V==]**

Finding a new place to stay was surprisingly easy. When you've paid with cash at a seedy hotel, it's very easy to just dodge, duck, dip, dive, and—it bears repeating—dodge out of there before they get a chance to actually _see_ the damage done to the room. And that same cash means it's rather easy to just shake a wad of it in somebody's face and get a room elsewhere, few questions asked.

Unfortunately, that same cash was doing absolutely _zero_ favors for either of them when it came to finding something to work with. Training was eminently doable, yes… if either of them wanted to end up outed and press-ganged into the Protectorate. Noah'd had the bright idea of waking up well before the ass-crack of dawn to go train in Central Park, but all it had taken was a five second internet search for Cross to point out that the New York PRT had collared no less than five 'fledgling villains' that way, with the dates lining up _suspiciously well_ with the debuts of multiple new Protectorate and Ward heroes.

Which left the both of them still stuck on square two: where to get some training in, and some equipment to actually work with.

"Find anything?" Noah asked when the hotel door closed again. Cross, despite being taller, was much reedier and, in Noah's words, "in desperate need of about five cheeseburgers" to fill out his frame. Was that a somewhat passable reason to sit on his ass and send Cross out to scout for training locations and acquire rations every time they needed something? Yes.

Was it also an excuse to keep sitting on his ass and banging his head against this problem, because while he was frustrated as hell with it, he wasn't about to give in?

Also yes.

"Well there _was_ an abandoned warehouse down near the Brooklyn Bridge," Cross began, dropping bags of junk food and jugs of water as he went. "But by the time I got _back_ there, two Wards were going through it. And a similar one on the other side of the bridge was crawling with druggies, crooks, and either an Adept or a discount Satanist, depending on the purpose of those symbols on the wall." He grabbed a can of cream soda and popped the top, downing half of it in one go. "How about you?"

"Toss me one of those." Cross reached down into the bag to grab another can, and—" _Don't_ shake it."—and gently tossed the thing at Noah, who grabbed it, popped it open, and took a swig of his own. "Well we've got about fifteen grand invested into just as many stocks, a thousand bucks apiece. Figure I'll compare how they do with what's projected, and endlessly curse the fact that I can't just make my twin the _accountant_ do it for me, and then we'll decide what to do with it from there." He turned the cheap little laptop towards Cross, and then clicked onto a different window. "Also found a few possible apartments that _aren't_ the size of a shoebox, though half of them would require some form of revenue stream before we actually do something about it. So we've got that going for us. Which is nice."

"And as for gear?" Cross asked. "Find anything we can actually _use_ for our little—"

"Don't say suicide mission."

"…fool's errand?"

Noah sighed, a long, slow, and _frustrated_ sigh as he moved his laptop in front of him and opened it up, scowling at it irritably. "I've been _trying_ to find something, but every, single, _fucking_ , link, is, _DEAD_!" Noah capped off his impromptu rant by slamming his head down onto the keyboard in frustration and just lay there, groaning with his nose sliding the cursor around on the screen. "Who knew it'd actually be hard to get a good raygun in fucking _Worm_!?"

Cross blinked in confusion over his can, and hastily drained what remained so that he could look over his partner's shoulder. "I'm sorry, did you just say you were trying to buy _tinkertech weaponry_ online? Who the hell would be _that_ freaking irresponsi—!"

" _ **WELCOME TO TOYBOX!"**_

The two of them both jumped in shock when Noah's laptop nearly blew out its _muted_ speakers with a deafening fanfare as its screen suddenly started flashing with shapes and colors.

Cross blinked again, this time trying to clear the ringing from his ears. "Well. Asked and answered I guess."

Noah stared for a little bit himself before scowling at the screen as realization hit him. "Those sneaky little shits…" Wisps of frost misted off of him as he clenched his fists, trails of rime creeping across the desk where his hands lay on its surface as he stared into the camera. "Let me guess: you sons of bitches are watching us right now, aren't you?"

" _ **WELCOME TO TOYBOX!"**_ the computer parroted helpfully, but even though it was the exact same message, there was _definitely_ a cheeky tone to the electronic voice.

"So you're tracking activity, and once it hits the point of frustration, thereby indicating total dedication… let me guess," Noah snarled. " _Cranial_."

" _ **WELCOME TO TOYBOX!"**_ it blared out once again.

"I have three hundred grand ready and waiting to pour into your pockets, and I am walking away _with_ my three hundred in three, two—" Noah started to count down, slowly reaching for the laptop's lid.

An instant later, an address flashed on the screen, and a new window with a map on it opened up. It pointed to the middle of an alley with absolutely nothing else in it.

"Well," Cross stated, hastily snapping a picture of the map with his phone. "That was easy. Maybe lead with that in the search bar next time instead of the guessing game?"

Noah _glared_.

"Just saying!"

" _ **WELCOME TO TOYBOX!"**_

"Oh _shut up,"_ Noah snapped, slamming the computer shut and frosting it over for good measure.

 **[==V==]**

Three blocks south, one and a half west, and then some indeterminate fraction back north. The map provided to them had been very specific: underneath the fire escape ladder in the alley, in between two dumpsters. It reeked to high heavens, nobody was coming, and against all odds, absolutely zero windows had a clear view of this absurdly specific part of New York City.

"Well, this _is_ the place!" Cross leaned in closer to the bare wall, poking it, prodding it, tapping at the dumpsters, and generally making a nuisance of himself. Or he would be, if anybody other than Noah were actively watching. "Hello? Anybody there?" Nothing. "Open Sesame!"

"Somehow I don't think that's going to work," Noah commented wryly, watching Cross try to find the door that both of them _knew_ existed.

"Then what _will_?" Cross knocked a pattern on the wall, and even tried the Diagon Alley brick sequence. Still, nothing. "Damn, really thought that last one would work."

"Yeah, well, it didn't." Noah took his own step closer to the completely and utterly nondescript wall, taking a look and trying to see anything special. "How _exactly_ is this supposed to work anyway? Do we just say 'please let us in', and suddenly some great big sign pops up saying welcome to Toybox or somethi—"

" _ **WELCOME TO TOYBOX!"**_

" _Mother_ fucker!"

Even as Noah's shocked exclamation rang out through the alley (and absolutely nobody turned to look, because the acoustics of the alley meant nobody on the sidewalk actually _heard_ anything), the brick wall in front of the two shimmered and _changed_. Gone was the boring brick, faded from bright red to a ruddy, bloody crimson by decades of inclement weather patterns. In its place was a majestically large wooden door with a simple doorknob, painted bright white, with what looked like a toddler's letter block toys set into the frame. WELCOME TO TOYBOX, it spelled out.

And in the center-top of the door was an old-fashioned bronze knocker.

Cross looked at Noah. Noah looked at Cross.

"You do it." "No, _you_ do it." "Rock paper scissors?" "Do it before I punch you." "That works too!"

Cross grasped the knocker with a rictus grin, raised it… and paused with a doubtful glance at Noah. "For the record, I can't help but feel I've seen this bit before."

"Just do it already."

"Alright, alright…" And with that, Cross rammed the knocker down, the echo of the thud echoed out…

 _Click!_

Before _that damn noise_ sounded out beneath them.

Noah gave Cross a _look_. "You just _had_ to jinx it, didn't yoOOOOOOOOHSHIIIIIIT!"

The once-solid bottom of the alley dropped out beneath the two's feet, and they plunged into a tunnel that _clearly_ hadn't existed just a moment before. They fell into the tunnel, which closed up behind them, choking the sound of their screams before anybody on the street could even tell somebody was in any kind of distress. It was clearly just a person realizing a rat had run over their shoes, and nothing to be worried about. Just another day in New York City.

Back in the sudden tunnel to possibly nowhere, however…

" _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!_ " / " _WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!"_

Down the tunnel they went, strobing lights replaced with a rainbow of color, straight into a journey through the endless cosmos beyond the Earth's horizon, until eventually… it stopped. The fall ended and firmly planted their asses on… _something,_ though at the time they were a bit too rattled to determine what.

" _AAAAAAAAAHHHHH_ —oh _thank God_ we stopped." Noah looked over and stared Cross dead in the eye. "That was _terrifying_."

"I actually found it rather enlightening!" Cross replied, the biggest, most manic smile Noah had ever seen on his face.

"Oh _fuck you_." Then Noah blinked, because Cross was sitting in a massive, overstuffed armchair, and _so was he_. "Where did the chair come from."

"Two words." Cross held up his fingers, and ticked them off as he spoke. "Tin—"

 _ **CRACKATHOOOM!**_

The two of them flinched in their chairs when a bolt of _literal lightning_ crashed down in the center of the otherwise perfectly featureless, seemingly dimensionless white room. Both of them flinched at the sudden noise and slammed their eyes shut, the brightness still managing to sear itself into their retinas. When their eyes opened though, they saw that the two of them were no longer alone.

There was now a woman standing in the middle of the room, directly on top of the rapidly-fading scorch mark from the lightning bolt.

"Cross," Noah whispered. "Psst. Did that woman just _ride the lightning_ in here?"

"That's about right I'd say," the woman said, the odd emphasis on 'about' outing her as Canadian. Noah flinched back into his chair. "Also, _that woman_ would like to bid you two gentleman a good day. And again. Welcome to Toybox."

Cross's brow shot up intently. "Well fuck, I guess the Canadians _are_ officially smarter than we are."

"Indeed." A snap of her fingers, and where before there had been nothing, a chair and desk appeared behind and before her. She sat down, and with the shock… _somewhat_ gone, the two got a good look at her.

She wore more or less casual clothes, really. A TARDIS t-shirt with a feminine-cut blazer over it, clearly more for style points than any kind of formality, covered her top. She also paired dark-wash skinny jeans with pristine high-top Chuck Taylors, drawing Noah's gaze as she crossed one leg over the other under the desk. A clearing of the woman's throat sent his gaze upwards to join Cross's on her head and face, which also displayed the only two concessions to being a cape. One, the domino mask with pitch-black mirrored lenses perched on the bridge of her nose, and doing just enough to obscure the shape of her cheekbones that, ordinarily, one would have difficulty being confident in identifying her face without it.

And the second concession promptly blew that out of the water, because the woman had what could only be lines of _circuitry_ running from beneath the collar of her shirt up to her left temple, and from there back along her head, somehow augmenting her partly-buzzed hairstyle in a very aesthetically pleasing manner.

"Cranial, I'm guessing?" Cross spoke up, to which the woman smiled.

"Yes indeed," she said, picking up and shuffling some papers that _were not there a second ago_. "Well, gentlemen—"

"Really?" Noah interjected. "Cause I was thinking she was more of a Morpheus myself."

Cranial stopped shuffling the papers, and looked up at Noah.

"Oh damn, you're right!" Cross added in, slapping his hand to his forehead. "White room, armchairs, all that's missing is you being Laurence Fishburn and offering red and blue pills!" He brought a hand to his chin. "And maybe a Hugo Weaving to go with it…"

Over at the desk, Cranial stood up, put the papers to the side, and promptly pushed them _off_ the desk. Instead of hitting the featureless white ground, they simply disappeared. "You know, despite having done this particular setup for several years now, you two are the first clients _I've_ introduced to actually pick up on that. Fans of Aleph cinema?"

"Yes," Noah said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

"Wonderful! We may just get along then." Cranial sat back down in her desk chair and flipped open a laptop that hadn't been there just three seconds prior, making both Noah and Cross double-take for the fifth time in as many minutes. "So, gentlemen. I understand that you have approximately three hundred thousand dollars at your disposal, and the desire to acquire some serious firepower from this organization."

"That _is_ the long and short of it, yes," Noah conceded, holding a hand up Cross's way and giving him a glance. A look shared between the two, and a shrug indicated Cross' consent: he'd let Noah handle this one. "I was under the impression that if we had funds, the Toybox would sell to us. Is there a problem with that scenario?"

"The first problem is that _you_ ," she pointed at Cross, "should still be in Florida, and _you_ ," this time her finger went to Noah, "should be in D.C. There's no airline tickets, no train tickets, gasoline receipts, car titles in your names, rental car information, _none_ of it. You also have the most bog-standard social media presence to ever exist, all of your grades seem to be perfectly middle of the road, health and medical histories are about as cookie-cutter as an extra on a bad hospital drama, and there is exactly _zero_ common ground that I could find where the two of you would have met in the first place." She paused. "The fact that you instantly cottoned onto an Earth Aleph reference _does_ raise some interesting questions, as did the scans we took on your entrance. So," she crossed her arms and leaned forwards over the desk as she gave them a flat look. "What happened, a bad encounter with some Haywire tech and the spooks tried to smooth it over?"

Noah did his level best to stare straight into what he _assumed_ were Cranial's eyes and not cybernetic implants replacing them, and opposite him, he assumed Cross did the same. The two very pointedly did _not_ look at each other. Not even when the chairs they sat in both shifted inwards to facilitate looking in each other's direction.

"Or something, then." Cranial typed away at her computer for a moment, then looked back up. "And yet, you're still looking for weaponry, _not_ some way to get back home, wherever that may be. Hence the third degree." She leaned forward, hands clasped on the desk. It was a very businesswoman-esque look, only slightly marred by her casual attire. "Which begs the question of _why_ , and _for what ends_."

"Let's get this out of the way first," Noah said. "You know we have powers." He held up a hand to forestall Cranial from saying anything the instant he saw her mouth moving. "You were using the laptop's webcam for an indeterminate amount of time after we started searching for ways to get in contact, it is all but guaranteed you saw one or both of us using our powers, and given the circumstances, fuck the 'unwritten rules'. We're not exactly intent on playing the double-life game anyways. Plus, with an outside perspective? At this rate, Earth Bet is _fucked_."

"Are you going to write me a manifesto, or actually get to the point," Cranial interjected, inspecting her fingernails.

"Chief Director Costa-Brown is Alexandria." Cranial froze, then stared straight at Noah with deadly intensity. "I used to work for an eye surgeon. No matter how good the prosthetic, it just doesn't _react_ like an actual eye does. And the same eye is visibly different in every broadcast after the Siberian took a chunk out of her. Two people who have nothing to do with each other don't _both_ suddenly have a prosthesis in place of a normal eye. You people just never had any reason to consider the possibility, let alone _look_ for it. Clearly the Chief Director of the PRT can't be a Parahuman. But to us?"

"Why leave it to chance that the person in charge of your org's oversight is on the same page when instead you can make _sure_ they are?" Cross added, leaning back in his seat with a 'what can you do' shrug.

"We have powers," Noah continued. "There's reason to believe some conspiracy or other is involved with the organization responsible for people with powers. Toybox is independent of that organization. We want to be independent of that organization too." He grinned. "And if we were able to ferret _that_ out in a couple of weeks, imagine what happens if we actually have _resources_."

"Fascinating," Cranial drawled, though her posture said the opposite of her careless tone. "Now we'll need to update our security. You still haven't answered the question: what is it that you _want_ , and what is it that you're going to _do_ with it?"

"We need tools," Cross interjected, leaning forwards intently. "Preferably some form of a power rig or exoskeleton, custom-made for our usage," he started spinning his index finger, a trail of steam following the digit. "As you know, we have powers, and in our opinion they're _good_ powers… but the fact is that, in the grand scheme of things, they're not quite good enough. Or rather, we can't get the working good enough within our optimal timeframe. If we want to draw out the maximum potential possible from our abilities, then our best chance is to enhance our effectiveness via a form of weaponry compatible with what we're capable of. And our best option for getting the tools we need… is you and yours."

"We've come to you with an offer." Noah leaned forward now, hands clasped, chin resting atop his fingers. "Power of acceptance is yours. Three hundred thousand is on the table now, with more to come should things go as planned. And if things _don't_ , you still get the money."

"Mm…" Cranial folds her hands together and taps her index fingers against her lips thoughtfully for a few seconds. "Three hundred thousand is a fairly decent chunk of change, yes…" her masks' eyes then flick up to stare at the pair emotionlessly. "But Toybox has clients who regularly dole out payment in the _millions_. And that's just for the _warranty fees_." She tilted her head to the side, a panel of her mask raising in lieu of an eyebrow. "For what you're asking, the amount you've offered is just the _down payment_. So, gentlemen!" The Tinker stood up and clapped her hands together, the sound echoing almost deafeningly in the too-small room. "Unless there was something _else_ you had in your back pocket, then I'm afraid that negotiations are over."

Noah's hands gripped tighter onto the armchair, and beneath his fingers, the first traces of ice crystals forming beneath his fingertips as he grit his teeth. Cranial's eye-frames started to narrow, and both were about to say something they would undoubtedly regret—

"Double or nothing."

Until the pair was brought up short by a non-sequitur from the third man in the room.

"What was that?" Cranial inquired, staring at Cross curiously.

Cross leaned back in his seat, his fingers tented in his lap as he slowly donned a confident grin. "You say that you're _regularly_ paid in the range of millions? Then let's arrange matters in an _irregular_ fashion and make things interesting. I say we put this all down to a wager, where the stakes are, to repeat myself, double or nothing."

Cranial stared at him silently for a few more minutes, her mask twitching minutely the whole while, before slowly leaning back against in her chair, her expression carefully neutral as she crossed her arms. "... _go on_."

"The stakes are simple enough," Cross started as Noah sat back, starting to chew his thumbnail. "We came to you for gear because we're planning an…" Cross waved his hand in search of a word, glancing at his comrade in askance. "Operation?" Noah nodded tersely. "An operation, with a not inconsiderate risk/reward ratio, and the only scenario where we walk out alive is with your tech. The terms are as follows: Toybox bets its craftsmanship and builds us the gear, and we undergo the operation. If we succeed, then we walk away with the technology and don't owe you a dime."

"And, what, if you lose we get your 300 grand?" Cranial scoffed, her demeanor shifting to all but scream 'unimpressed'. "As we've established, that's not worth much."

"No," a cold voice interrupted, and the Tinker's attention turned back to Noah, whose head was bowed solemnly as he grit his teeth. "Not the 300 grand. _Our lives."_

 _That_ statement apparently served to crash Cranial's train of thought, and she actually blinked at them in complete shock for a bit as she all but literally rebooted herself. "I'm sorry, I must need to recalibrate my audio drivers," she finally managed to get out. "I could've _sworn_ I heard you say you were offering your _lives_ as _collateral_."

"Oh no, trust me, you heard the man perfectly well," Cross jabbed his thumb at Noah even as he donned an even more vicious grin. "As I said, double or nothing. We're putting our own necks on the line for this. Our lives against your product. I wasn't kidding when I said the operation was dangerous; one misstep, and 'dead' will be a generous fate for us. If we manage to take your tech in and come out alive, then we walk away with all debts cleared, and prove that Toybox can take a nothing and make them something. But if we fail…" Cross's grin didn't waver as he raised his thumb… and then inverted it with impunity. "Then we're done for. As I said… simple, no?"

"Simple? If you separate it all out, sure." She drawled in a mocking tone as she raised her hands and started counting off. "Let's see, you'll want some exotic materials for Gramme, possibly Little Miss Mengele too, something to protect from knives—"

"And there's the first misunderstanding," Noah interrupted with a dismissive wave. "We aren't going after the _Nine_."

"Even though that would be _so_ much simpler." Cross sighed wistfully.

"Okay then," Cranial said lightly, leaning forward with a smile. "Now I'm just _dying_ to know. Tell me, then. What _exactly_ is it that you have planned?"

So they did. Noah and Cross talked. Cranial listened. And by the time the two men were done talking, it was clear to everyone involved… that she _desperately_ needed a drink.

"You two are _insane,"_ she breathed weakly, gaping at them in numb shock.

"And you willingly shoved _schizotech_ into your own skull, let's not throw stones here," Cross replied in a snide tone.

"But—stop. This still doesn't make any _sense!"_ Cranial waved her hands in protest, visibly trying to regain control of the situation. "I've humored you two, but enough! That's it, this is where I draw the line! For god's sakes, think about what you're saying! No matter how you cut it, there's still _no motivation_ for us to accept this! If we win, we gain _nothing!"_

"But at the same time, you _lose_ nothing," Noah pointed out frigidly.

"If we stole your tech and ran, then yes, you'd be screwed over but good," Cross nodded sagely before rolling his eyes with a scoff. "But as it is, the mere phrase 'screw over a Tinker and steal their tech' is an oxymoron so long as GPS exists. And if we die in the process of this grand feat, then all you'll have truly 'lost' from this would be a pair of _intensely_ exclusive pieces of technology, good for none but the two of us, worth significantly less than whatever fortune you'd charge us for them, especially since now you don't have to worry about maintenance." he started weighing his hands with a faux-contemplative expression. "Compared to the, and I quote, _millions_ you make on every deal, that's not even a blip on your organization's bank account."

"And don't forget the publicity aspect," Noah remarked idly. "If we fail, it's still a positive mark on Toybox's record. 'Look how confident these two idiots got because they had _Toybox_ tech!' Sort of like a moron who thinks he's a better soccer player cause he's got Adidas on, or some shit. Your brand would be legendary."

"Yeah, once we washed your _liquified organs_ off it," Cranial snorted with a sharp glance to the side.

Cross's expression fell into a decidedly unimpressed deadpan. "Do you actually want to bullshit us about your morality and how the world sees you, or can we continue talking seriously?"

Cranial's only response was a tired groan, and she started massaging the bridge of her mask's nose, muttering wordlessly for almost a straight minute as the room lapsed into silence.

Finally, Cranial stiffened and looked over her fingers, glaring piercingly at Noah. "You said that upon your defeat, we 'lose' nothing," she recited, her voice cold and analytical. "If that's the case, then what do we _gain_ from your victory? _Besides,_ " she cut Cross off with a sharply raised hand when he started to open his mouth. "The obvious results."

"You're _not_ so dense as to not have already figured that out for yourself," Noah all but spat back, his chair icing over a bit more as he started to get well and truly . "If you _really_ want me to spell it out for you, though? The world will know that it wasn't be just _any_ sword that felled the monster, it was a _Toybox_ sword. Everyone and their grandmother who wanted to do _anything_ would also want a Toybox sword, since they've conflated the deed with the supplier, and nothing will ever undo that." He snorted. "It's the world's most lethal _advertising campaign_."

"And beyond even that?" Cross spread his arms with a massively confident grin. "Once we emerge victorious, it'll just be the start. You'll be ahead of the curb, because you'll have front-row tickets… to whatever the hell we do next."

The 'eyebrows' of Cranial's mask slowly rose up, her body involuntarily reacting as realization swept over her. "So… let me get this straight," She breathed deep, looking the two in the eyes one by one. "You… you are suggesting a mission so dangerous, so foolhardy, so _suicidal_ , that not even the _Triumvirate_ are willing to sanction it. And you want that to be your _audition_?"

"Not an audition," Noah clarified. "We want a _pilot_."

"You two are _insane_."

"And to reiterate the earlier point: Skull _, schizotech,_ stones," Noah deadpanned.

Cranial leaned back in her seat, massaging her temples miserably with an aggravated hiss. "Fffff—Higher investment for exponentially larger potential payoff, but meanwhile _grgghhh_ …"

Cross cocked an eyebrow as he _oh so subtly_ leaned closer to Noah. "Do you think we 404'd her?" he 'whispered' for the room to hear.

 _CLUNK!_

And promptly winced and sat back down as Noah rapped an icy knuckle on his forehead. "Broke even, got it, shutting up now."

Still, the exchange _did_ manage to snap Cranial out of her thoughts, as her hands promptly flew across the top of the desk in a blur, and an instant later, a door shimmered into existence. It had a similar look and feel to the one that _hadn't_ led Cross and Noah into the Toybox proper, and it just… stood there, in the middle of the room. Both would-be customers leaned to the side of the door so they could see Cranial, glares accusing, but she merely raised her hands and shook her head. "It's an actual door this time, not a trap. That's the waiting room; if you two… if you two wouldn't mind, I need time to confer with the rest of the Toybox, _especially_ for something on this level." She favored the two of them with a smile, though the effect was ruined by the panels of her mask twitching and spasming erratically. "It's not exactly a one woman operation here, don't you know?"

"... if this one opens a trapdoor under us, I will drop your asses into a literal iceage," Noah warned as he and Cross stood up and walked to the door.

"You would try!" Cranial teased back, hands carefully clasped on the desk as Cross bit the bullet and opened the door. It actually _was_ a door simply standing in the middle of the room, and it actually _did_ lead somewhere else. And this time, no, there was _not_ a trapdoor waiting to open beneath them.

Instead, the two entered… well, more or less a normal room. Smooth angles and soft white lighting, but it didn't feel like a UFO.

"Is it just me," Noah asked aloud, "or does everything we've seen from them basically feel like it's 'architecture, by Apple'?"

"Eh," Cross waffled, crossing his arms behind his head. "Feels more like less murder-y Aperture Labs to me. Until I hear shit about a cake and lemons, I'm good."

"Uh-huh. Now if only we had somewhere to—" Noah couldn't even finish what he was saying before a pair of bean-bag chairs fell from the ceiling… or whatever passed for a ceiling in a room basically carved out from a gap in space-time… and landed on the ground, followed by holographic monitors appearing in front of them. They sat on opposite sides of the room, or about as opposite as it could be in a room with no visible walls, and the room itself may have looped back around on itself at some point, _and_ this line of thought was making both Cross's and Noah's brains start to hurt. All they needed to know is that one of the bean bags was red, the other blue, and that was enough of a signal to say whose was which.

Cross and Noah shared a look. Cross was the one who shrugged and went to the red bean bag chair first, flouncing down upon it without a care in the world. Noah walked carefully up to the chair, eyeing it, prodding it, and eventually sitting on it.

"Good afternoon, valued customer, you may call me Pyrotechnical," a voice emanated from the holo-monitor in front of Cross. His tone was warm, excited, although the exact voice was a bit hard to parse due to the electronic reverb that dominated the speakers. "I'll be handling your order today.

"Glace," the one by Noah spoke. Her voice had about as much emotion as her tone; that is to say, none. "Let us begin."

"With?" Noah asked, his own voice just as frosty.

Glace sighed, and Noah could practically _hear_ her rolling her eyes as though he'd just asked her to explain '1+1' to him. "A _baseline_ , genius. You want custom tech, you need to give me something to _work_ with."

Back with Pyrotechnical, Cross grinned. "Great! Alright, so what're we gonna do?"

"Well," Pyrotechnical responded over the line, "give me an idea of what you're after. What can you do? What _can't_ you do? What do you want to do better? That sort of thing, you know?"

"Well… for starters?" Cross grinned eagerly as he held up his hand, steam roiling from his palm eagerly. "If you really want me to show you my max, you're gonna have to offer us some refreshments first."

"How much?" Glace asked, her tone analytical as though she were recording every word spoken… which honestly wasn't that much of a leap.

Noah snorted and started to roll his shoulders, loosing a resounding number of _cracks_ as he shattered the frost covering his back. "The better question," he shot back, "is how much you _got?"_

And that, in essence, set the tone for the next few hours.

 **[==V==]**

"Alright, that's enough time!~" A button press, and two holes in the floor appeared beneath the bean bags Cross and Noah sat on. Before either of the Parahumans(?) could so much as holler, they fell down yet another endless chasm, and then promptly popped _up_ out of a pair of new holes in front of Cranial's desk, the holes closing up beneath them before they could fall back iin and allowing them to land on the ground. A different desk than the last one, too: art deco, instead of clear glass.

Cross had a manic grin on his face, puffs of steam leaking out with every breath, while Noah and his beanbag chair were currently stuck inside a block of ice.

"Do it again!" Cross whooped, shooting his fists in the air with twin blasts of steam.

" _No!"_ Noah _also_ yelled, coating himself an his seat in a brand new coat of frost.

"Well, it's been wonderful having you two here today!" Cranial clapped her hands, and another door appeared behind the two. "You sir, please chisel your friend out of his Titanic-killer there, and then the door is behind you. Don't call us; we'll call you."

"And what's the verdict?" Cross asked as he got up, while Noah simply wrenched himself free of his arctic seat with minimal effort, brushing the rapidly melting fragments off of himself and onto the irreverent Tinker's floor without remorse.

"Like I said." She waved a hand, noncommittally. "We'll call you." The door behind the two men swung open, the sounds and smells of Manhattan drifting in through it. Cranial nodded at the door, and apparently, the two of them got the message. With but a single look back from the short, frosty one, the two exited.

Cranial hovered her hand above the door's button… and paused as she donned a vicious grin. "Oh, and by the way?" She called out, snagging the pair's attention. "You're going to want to reset the clocks on your phone, by my estimate they're running about two hours fast."

The Parahumans(?) blinked for a second, then promptly fished out their phones and looked through them for a bit before looking up at her in shock.

"Hey, what the fuck did you—!?" Cross started to holler…

SLAM!

Right as the door to Toybox slammed shut in his face and disappeared.

Cranial pushed back from the desk, which disappeared back into whatever ether Dodge's tech stored stuff inside. The chair beneath her morphed into a chaise longue, and she lounged back, pulling the mask from her face and retrieving the memory card stored inside of it. A panel on the arm of her chaise opened up, and she slid the card inside, uploading the new data to every other member of Toybox.

In an instant, holographic displays lit up around her, each of the individuals on-screen helpfully identified only by the names written along the bottom. Pyrotechnical. Glace. Big Rig. Bauble. Toy Soldier. Dodge… and the boy's mother, who was surprisingly supportive of the eight-year-old Tinker savant, and speaking for him as he concentrated more on playing with the latest _n-_ dimensional Rubik's cube he'd developed than the meeting itself, as he was wont to do.

It helped that his mother was a financial analyst, which made keeping her around even more useful than simply as a stabilizing influence for the blessing that was Dodge.

"Everyone get the data packet?" Cranial asked. A chorus of affirmatives sounded from the monitors. "Alright. Pyrotechnical, Glace. Thoughts? Impressions?"

" _I'm going to be frank?"_ Pyrotechnical began, his expression somewhat obscured as he puffed out a cloud of smoke from the two cigars he was chewing. " _I'm a little disturbed. I mean, that Cross guy was funny as all hell if he was a bit odd, sure, and I won't lie and say I'm not looking forwards to seeing this thing in action, but…"_

" _But none of that matters,"_ a soft, yet stern woman's voice rang from Dodge's screen. Dodge sat next to his mother, playing with something that could best be described as a Rubik's Mobius strip, while the woman pointedly set her gaze just far enough that she couldn't see it out of the corner of her eyes and give herself a migraine. " _Ignore their personalities. Ignore everything subjective, impressions, statements, all of that. Given what we know, and what we were told, does anyone here well and truly believe they intend what they've stated?"_

Cranial took back over. "Ordinarily, I would have said no. I wouldn't have given them the time of day, and they'd have been lucky if I only dropped them on their asses in a dumpster instead of selling them out to the PRT. But if you all check the data, as always I scanned them from their computer. And it's because of what I found that, even if we weren't going to sell anything, I still wanted them down here for a more comprehensive scan." She shifted on her chaise and sat up straighter. "I know the rudimentary scan has a chance of both false positives and negatives, but _three scans_ all returned the same result: _neither of them had a Corona Pollentia_."

That got everyone else sitting up straighter. Even the eight-year-old Dodge paused and looked up from his… _thing,_ although his hands never stopped fiddling with it.

"I repeated the scan once they actually entered, and I confirmed it," Cranial continued, answering the unanswered question on her group's collective minds. "Despite clearly displaying powers, _neither_ had a Corona Pollentia. Not even an inactive one. Which means, ladies and gentlemen, that we have living examples of powers from a different source."

" _What about a Trump's work?"_ Big Rig asked, sitting in what looked like the cabin of a truck. " _Temporary powers from a Trump wouldn't show on a brain scan."_

"They wouldn't show a Corona, no," Cranial admitted. "But they'd still show abnormal brain activity. As it is, _nothing_ truly changed in them, even while they were doing their best Yellowstone and Hubbard impressions. And even if that were the case, I watched them for a straight week without their knowledge. If they do report to someone higher than them, then they're the best damn actors I've ever seen."

" _Hm… Alright, let's move forwards under the parameters that Cranial's data is accurate,"_ Bauble interjected, erratically adjusting the lenses on her glasses. " _Why does that even matter? Why not just take their three hundred, slap something together in half an hour, and send them off to do whatever? No skin off our noses."_

"Because we can't _risk_ it!" Cranial yelled, snapping at the other woman. "We can't take the risk that they're just a couple of madmen, because damn it all, but they were _right_." She tapped away on the display set into the arm of her chaise, and brought up multiple images and scans. Each was of either Alexandria or the Chief Director of the PRT, Rebecca Costa-Brown, with dates in the top-left corner. "I had to slow the footage down to catch it, but they were right. Pupillary reflex, fixation, saccading, _all of it._ And before you ask, it's not constant. Since the Siberian appeared, there have been times when Director Costa-Brown has two perfectly normal eyes…"

She brought up another image, this time of the iconic Brute shaking hands with the head of all Parahuman law enforcement in the nation.

"And that's _only_ when she and Alexandria are _in the same room."_

A slew of censored cursing roared through the room's speakers as the Toybox went nigh-on mad… well, _madder_ than usual.

"— _OUT OF YOUR—!"_

" _WE ARE SO—!"_

"— _YES I_ _ **BEEP!**_ _DAMN SAID FIFTY MORE IN TEN MINUTES,_ THE PROTECTORATE IS GOING TO COME DOWN ON OUR HEADS LIKE A—"

And that was as far as Cranial was willing to let things go. As such, she disconnected her auditory nerves, slammed her fist on the arm of her chair—

 _ **BWAAAAH!**_

And waited patiently as the airhorn stopped blaring throughout her comrades' locales, effectively shutting them all up. She cocked her brow and gave the rest of the Tinkers a flat look as she recovered her hearing and they did the same. "You done yet?"

" _ **BEEP!**_ _ing hate Nautilus for giving you that damn thing…"_ Glace groused as she dug a finger through her throbbing ear.

" _Ahem,"_ Dodge's mother cleared her throat loudly, jerking her head to the side. " _Language."_

" _That aside!"_ Toy Soldier spoke up now, drawing attention. " _Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Yes, they were right about this. Yes, they're apparently not normal parahumans, but for all we know their Coronas are elsewhere in the nervous system. It's a precedent only in some of the odder Case 53's, true, but it's still_ possible _. So what proof do we have that they're not just… fearless madmen who got stupid lucky?"_

" _I think they're scared."_

All murmuring stopped. Cranial looked to Dodge's screen, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw everybody else's attention turn towards Dodge. The little boy, the youngest, brightest star among them, hadn't stopped fiddling with his 'toy'... but the fact that he was talking at all was cause to listen.

" _They sound scared. Like they found a monster sleeping under their bed."_ He looked up to his mother. " _Mommy, can you make sure their monster isn't under_ my _bed tonight?"_

" _O-of course Morty,"_ his mother smiled shakily, giving him a light, one-armed hug. " _I'll even use that flattener of yours to make sure there's nowhere for anything to hide. But… you were saying?"_

Dodge shrugged as he looked back at his… _shape,_ if the two-dimensional thing could be called that. " _I remember others who weren't scared, but they didn't ask for help. They said they were big kids, and big kids don't need help. They just did whatever. But those two…"_

" _Asked… for our tech…"_ Big Rig completed slowly, blinking as he started to put the pieces together. " _They… don't want to die, but they're willing to risk_ that _anyways? That doesn't make any sense—!"_

"Unless they know something we don't…" Cranial finished softly, her knuckles white as she clenched her fist in front of her mouth. "The monster under the bed."

" _What kind of a monster is scarier than_ guaranteed death!?" Pyrotechnical demanded incredulously.

" _...and so we take the bet,"_ Glace filled the uncomfortable silence that followed the question, swallowing heavily as she looked at Cranial with new respect. " _And so we double-down, even if they don't know it."_

"Because if they do win," Cranial nodded, leaning her head back and staring at the featureless ceiling. "I'd rather be at the eye of their storm than on the fringes. And if we lose… then we're grabbing Gramme and I'm forcing him back to sanity, damn the consequences, because all of a sudden I think that living on this planet just doesn't seem that smart anymore. Agreed?"

The vote was unanimous.

 **[==V==]**

"Well!" Cross proclaimed as he vaulted onto his bed, snatched up their laptop and flipped it open, starting to browse aimlessly. "I'd say that went well, wouldn't you?"

"Mmph, no, I wouldn't," Noah grunted dismissively, for his part starting to pace back and force in their room, a trail of arctic mist following him.

"No?" Cross glanced over the screen of his computer in askance.

"I'm not saying there's any guarantee that things are going to go _bad,_ but right now?" Noah raised his hand and held it even in the air. "We're in limbo. They didn't say no, but they didn't sign a contract either. No guarantee they'll take us up on this, no guarantee they won't sell us out to the highest bidder, no guarantee we'll hear back from them period."

"Mm," Cross murmured, his own steamy meandering joining Noah's frosty contemplation. "Alright, let's assume we _don't_ get access to Toybox tech, and that we're right back where we started before today. What _else_ could we get our hands on that would help us just as much?"

"Already on that," Noah replied, pointing at the computer. "Look at the other window."

Cross complied, clicking as directed and cocking an eyebrow at what he saw. "Dojos and self-defense courses… smart, get strong inside, get tech outside, both bases are covered."

"Mmph, smart in _theory,_ but in practice? Not so much," Noah shook his head in denial. "All those options are ones I've dismissed. They're just not… good enough, you know? I mean, if we try _that_ while the only thing we know is how to clock a mugger, then…"

"Yeah, 'chunky salsa' would be generous…" Cross started idly spinning up a disc of steam with his finger as he thought. "So we need training, but we need it to be something extreme, but where the _hell—?"_

An instant later, Cross stopped his finger-spinning and the steam dissipated as he stared at nothing.

"Uh, Cross?" Noah asked, poking him. "You okay there?"

"Alright, Plan B." Cross started typing furiously on the laptop, steam starting to waft from him like a lightweight chimney as he grinned madly. "Pack your shit, we're heading south to D.C."

"... _what_." Noah, stopping cold. " _Why!?_ "

"Because we're heading for the Pentagon."

"And we're going to the Pentagon _why_ exactly?" Noah prompted.

"So we can meet with a General, Admiral or other," Cross replied. "Obviously."

" _Don't get cute with me_ ," Noah growled. "Answers. _Now_."

Cross sighed, looking up from the computer again. "Two things. First, we need to make sure the Protectorate and PRT can't just swoop in and snatch us up if we make one mistake, and that is _infinitely harder_ in New York City, the seat of the Protectorate and hometown of _Legend_ , than anywhere else on the Eastern Seaboard. Hell, I saw him doing a grid pattern every hour, _on the hour_ , every single day we've been here so far. Only a matter of time 'til he finds us and we become blips on a dozen radars we don't want to be on." Cross paused. " _Almost_ anywhere else would be safer."

" _Almost_ anywhere else?" Noah asked, already dreading the answer.

"Brockton," Cross answered, as if that explained everything. And by Noah's shudder, it did. "And _second_ , think about what the other major equalizing factor is. The first is powers, the second is equipment, and the third is, as you pointed out, _training_. The PRT aped US military doctrine for training its personnel, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that in the _almost three decades_ parahumans have been around, the military, however much it's been gutted, has to have come up with _some_ way to level the playing field," Cross grinned malevolently as he jabbed his thumb at his own head. "I say we get a piece of that action."

Noah's jaw slowly dropped open as he finally pieced together the direction of Cross's thoughts. "You want to join the _United States Military!?"_

"Or, at least, get training from them and become a literally certified badass," Cross shrugged indifferently. "Honestly, that sounds more likely than actually getting enlisted, but hey, I'll take what I can get. By the way, what sounds more badass to you, SEAL, Delta or Green Beret?"

"Uh, whichever, Delta I guess— _wait!"_ Noah held his hand up begging for a pause to collect his thoughts. "Cross, I don't know if you've forgotten or you're willfully ignoring facts, but Parahumans _can't_ serve in the military! Not the US military anyways! And even if we can pass being scanned for Coronas, we still won't be training our actual abilities!"

"Which is why we're not exactly truckin' down to the enlistment office, is it?" Cross cocked his head oh-so-innocently.

"... you want to find a stagnant higher-up and make them an _offer_ , don't you?" Noah asked.

"Runnin' through military headlines from the past decade or so, pickin' up and chuckin' out names as we speak!" Cross confirmed with a nod, his typing not slowing down in the least.

"Alright, alright," Noah started pacing again, tapping his finger in his palm. "We need somebody who was on the fast track and a major rising star _before_ parahumans and the PRT really started to take hold and get a stranglehold on power and capitol in this country. Someone who's an opponent of the PRT, or maybe had negative contacts with parahumans. And if one of them had negative contacts with parahumans, they became outspoken _against_ them, and ran their own career into a wall thanks to them." He held up a list with his fingers. "One, at least an admiral, preferably a general, two or more stars. Two, outspoken against the PRT and/or Protectorate. And three, negative personal contact with a parahuman, but not _traumatic_ because I don't want to re-enact the Suicide Squad. Got it?"

"Mrgh…" Cross stuck his tongue out the corner of his mouth in lieu of answer, mumbling intently to himself as he scrolled. "No, no, maybe, no, fuck no, oh _fuck_ no, oh maybe—dead, of course, why wouldn't he be, no, n— _GWEGH!?"_ And then, out of the blue, Cross out and out _froze,_ a blast of steam blasting from his skull as he nearly swallowed his tongue as he stared at the computer in… honestly, a whole _bevy_ of emotions.

Noah looked at his partner in concern. "Cross?"

"Uhh… _yahtzee?"_ Cross choked out, slowly looking up at Noah in wide-eyed confusion. "I think I found… something, I found something," he weakly spun the computer around for Noah to take in. "See for yourself."

Noah looked, and began to scan. "Three stars… lieutenant general… served three tours in—wait, he lost his eye doing _what!?_ " He looked to Cross for confirmation, who could only nod, scroll to the top, and _point_. This time it was Noah's turn to almost choke on his own tongue. "C-Cross… tell me that isn't who I think it's supposed to be."

Cross shook his head in denial, but Noah knew he wasn't denying what he wanted him to. "I wasn't even that familiar with him," he whispered weakly, "and even _I_ recognize him."

"Bullshit." Noah wanted to close the laptop, look away from the face staring back at the two of them. "The odds of this actually happening are slim to _fucking_ none." He stopped for a moment. "Knock-on effect from getting ROB'd? I mean, they're random _omnipotent_ beings, not _omniscient_. You can't just _drop_ people into a world without some… aftershocks, I guess, from casually breaking the multiverse like that."

"Noah, whatever the cause or reason is, there's a bigger, badder question we need to face…" Cross bemoaned as he massaged his face in misery.

"What?!"

"We are trying to overturn the entire status quo, which is, in effect, going to war with the _entire fucking world._ Can you think of anyone, _anyone else_ you'd want in your corner…" Cross pointed at the screen. "More than _him?"_

"... _fuck."_

"Fuck indeed."

And so the two of them found their next target… for better or for far, _far_ worse.

 **[==V==]**

Over two hundred miles south from the pair's location, within the walls Army wing of the Pentagon, a man stood before a door… and was distinctly _annoyed._

"Again?" He murmured, looking from the coffee cup with napkin in his hand and to the nameplate on his door. The _dusty_ nameplate, as compared to all of the other, _clean_ nameplates on every other office door on the floor. He ran the napkin over his office's nameplate, simultaneously satisfied and annoyed when he pulled away a small, but visible layer of dust.

It wasn't perfect, but it was clean enough. Clean enough that he could see himself in it—as much as he could see with but one eye—but more importantly, he and anyone else who came by would see his name. A name that had stood strong in the walls of this building for years on end, and would remain strong for years to come.

"I'm not done yet, damn it…" he growled, more to himself than anyone else, as he opened his office's door and marched inside.

The door slammed shut behind him, and the nameplate resumed its silent vigil once more, proudly announcing the name and rank of the man within for all to see, whether they wanted to or not.

 _ **Lieutenant General Slade Wilson**_


	3. Chapter 3

"You know, I never thought I'd say this?" Noah leaned back in his seat, legs stretched all the way out as he stretched his arms out above his head, the light from his dinky little laptop reflecting off his glasses. "But thank God for Amtrak. _So_ much more legroom than coach."

"And sooo much more comfortable than a TGV, I'll give you that much!" Cross added in from where he lay, spread out on the cabin's top bunk. "The French don't do beds. Viva America!"

"Speaking of?" Noah spun the laptop around, then gingerly handed it to Cross. "While you were doing your best Sleeping Beauty impression, I got us a bit more info. Did you know the train has free satellite internet?"

"First, I've been our boots on the ground since we got here, so no accusations of laziness if you please," Cross requested—ironically—without any real heat as he sat up and turned to give Noah his full attention. "Second… what do we got on the General? Is he good… or Ripper?"

Noah passed the laptop up to Cross's so he could see it. "Take a look. He's got a Wikipedia page, a personal page on the DoD website, a PHO _thread…"_ He shrugged. "Multiple Wikipedia pages, if you include an extra page for every major event he was involved in that deserved its own page. You know, like how Watergate and Deep Throat got their own pages. And probably multiple PHO threads for those, too."

"Bagrat, don't fail us now," the Steam-man murmured beneath his breath as he flipped the computer open and started scrolling through the pages his friend had left open. "Alright, Wilson's early career is normal enough… or as normal as you can get when you serve two tours in _Vietnam,_ anyways. Seriously, who the hell would go _back_ to—holy shit, he _caught a grenade mid-flight and threw it back_?"

"And that's when they pinned the medal of valor on him and _kept_ him from going back for number three," Noah nodded sagely. "Didn't want to risk losing him. And then there's the big one: so apparently Desert Storm still happened here, yeah?" Cross grimaced and nodded, so he continued. "Well apparently they didn't count on another war so soon, so they couldn't stop Wilson from re-upping _again._ Once there, he took a laser targeting system and painted a target for artillery support on Capes. Not one, not two, but _three capes_. All while dodging Blaster projectiles, Tinkertech weaponry, and Shaker assaults." Noah turned to Cross. "And all he got was a small scar along his chin from a piece of shrapnel flying psat him. Honestly, the more I hear? The less I believe it."

"Let's just be grateful that humans are badasses with or without a worm in the head, means we don't need to recruit exclusively among the trauma-addled…" Cross mused offhandedly, tilting his head as he came upon another article. "Huh, looks like he also spent some time with UN Peacekeeping forces in West Africa, right around the time Moord Nag really got nasty." Cross clicked through a few sites on the laptop and scrolled through the articles, skimming and looking at pictures commemorating the event. "Well _damn_ , he rescued an entire village of child soldiers from some Master/Trump cape warlord? That's—" He froze mid-sentence, before picking up the laptop and slowly turning it towards Noah. "Is… is that what I _think_ it is?"

Noah craned his neck to take a peek at the screen, and this time it was _his_ turn to freeze. Literally, because a small layer of ice sprung forth from the back of his neck. "U-uh, yeah." Noah stared Cross in the eye. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is. Let me see…" Noah scrolled through, looking for a few specific words. "Yup! That's _exactly_ what you think it is."

"He got it. Off a _warlord._ A _Master_. _While he was still breathing,"_ Cross ground out weakly. He finally nodded his head to the side with a heavy sigh. "Well, it's official: President Wilson or not, this guy can still kick our ass."

"Mmhm," the Frost-man nodded solemnly as he sat back down. "And that last one was _before_ he became an officer; in fact, I'm pretty sure it's the _reason_ they made him one. Thing is though, getting stuck riding a desk didn't do much, it seems. Go to oh-two, October, right before the midterms."

Cross obliged, clicking back over to the general history tab before making a strangled noise. It sounded something like water trying to squeeze through a pipe clogged by a whoopie cushion. " _That's_ how he lost his eye!? I mean, I remember he lost it to a Teacher's Pet, but a _katana!? Seriously!?"_

"Japanese ambassador let him keep them, too. Probably an apology for almost letting the VP get killed at their embassy by a member of the ambassador's personal detail." Noah shrugged. "Apparently the sheer outrage at seeing a _gaijin_ wielding a genuine Masamune was enough to send the Pet's Thinker power into a 404 error. After that, well… let's just say they needed to get creative with signing their confession."

"Toes?" Cross asked.

" _Teeth_. Credit to Teacher where it's due, he's got a damn addictive drug if nothing else." The Frost-man scoffed. "And probably a good dental plan, too."

"Hell of a moment of glory…" his thermal counterpart frowned as he picked out a new tab. "Except… that it was his _last_ one…"

"Yeah." Noah's hand found his chin, and he rested his head on his open palm. "Turns out, the moneybags in charge of the PRT don't like it when someone rightfully criticizes them for not doing their job. Wilson got a promotion three-star, yes, but he's done pretty much _nothing_ for five years."

"Or rather, hasn't been _allowed_ to do anything else, because if this last interview is anything to go by?" A wry smirk played across Cross's face as he tapped his knuckle on the computer's screen. "He would _not_ have gone gently into that good night. Oh look, they even recorded it."

"How did I not notice the audio file?" Noah asked, more to himself than to Cross, who simply pressed the 'play' button on the browser.

" _For over two hundred years,"_ the reproduced voice of General Slade Wilson, so _very_ recognizable to both Devil Fruit users began, " _this country has relied on its armed forces. It has relied on them to defend its borders, as in the War of 1812 and the Second World War. It has relied on those brave, honorable men and women to defend our allies, to fight_ alongside _them, as we did on the sixth of June, 1944. And it has relied on them to protect the world from new, unforeseeable threats, such as the parahuman warlord Abu el-Hol's sudden usurpation and conquest of the entire Arabian Peninsula._

" _And yet it is only in the new millenium that, for the_ first time _in our nation's history, we cannot maintain our armed forces. Do not mistake me; not_ will _not, but_ cannot _, because the funds needed to protect our nation are best used_ elsewhere _. No more National Guard; we have parahumans instead. No need to maintain the air force; we have flying parahumans who can perform those duties. And the Army Corps of Engineers? A single Thinker. That's what they replaced an entire squadron of brilliant men and women with, the ones responsible for our nation's foundation, its infrastructure._ One _parahuman._

 _Make no mistake. I love my country, and for the last thirty years, I have been proud to serve the United States as a member of her military. And I hold no hatred for parahumans either, far from it. Roger Carlson, Maria Smith, Jackson Weaver. All good soldiers, all parahumans who fought alongside me, and who died bravely in the line of duty. I acknowledge that parahumans were integral to Desert Storm, and I would fight alongside them once again, without hesitation. But there is a limit, and we have_ long _since passed it. This increasing reliance on_ parahumans _, on individual persons with unexplainable abilities, people that we now_ know _to have a tendency to be unstable and unreliable? We cannot suffer it any longer, explicitly because our nation has_ already _suffered for it._

 _Where was the 'might of the Protectorate' when the Slaughterhouse began its bloody rampage across our nation? Not there;_ never _there. When did the parahumans who were responsible for liberating Ellisburg flee, leaving entire squadrons of unpowered soldiers,_ good _soldiers to die? Why is it that throughout the entirety of the second World War, not a single one of Hitler's men managed to set foot on US soil, but we now have veritable_ infestations _of genuine Nazis, spreading from sea to shining sea, and yet the PRT and our government continue to do_ nothing _about it?_

" _I do not know exactly what it is I am seeing in our country. But what I do know is that it cannot,_ must not _continue."_

For a straight minute, the pair sat staring at the computer in contemplative silence, until Noah unfroze first, leaning back in his seat with a heavy sigh. "This guy was a patriot and a war hero…"

"Whose career was _guillotined_ by the PRT, Protectorate, and Parahumans in general. And we're two Ability-users throwing ourselves on his _mercy,"_ Cross summarized in a dead tone of voice. "How the hell are we supposed to walk out of this _with_ our heads attached, exactly?"

Noah rolled his eyes. "I don't know, genuflect and beg?... it means to—"

" _I know what it means you pretentious jackass."_ Cross hissed, shooting a paradoxically frigid glare at his compatriot.

"Alright, alright…" the Frost-man raised his hands in surrender. "So anyways, kneeling and begging… but for now, we actually need to get close enough to beg in the first case. In which case, may I suggest we get some help from a third party in putting a foot in the door?"

Cross looked Noah in the eye. Noah looked Cross in the eye. The two of them shared a nod, and matching evil grins spread across their faces as Cross handed Noah the laptop, while Noah himself cracked his knuckles and laid his fingers on the keyboard.

"Dear New York Times Editorial Staff," Cross narrated for Noah to type as he tented his fingers. "I recently contacted the Toybox, the independent Tinker storefront, in search of something better than simply pepper spray for self-defense use. Almost from the outset, this supposedly legitimate merchant group tried trick after trick to swindle, con, and steal—"

" _You have five seconds to give me a good reason_ not _to brick your computer."_

Both of them managed to restrain the flinch as Cranial's voice piped through the laptop's dinky speakers, the tin quality of her synthesized voice removing almost all of its intimidating properties.

"We need a hand getting in contact with a very hard-to-reach person," Noah blurted swiftly. After five seconds passed and their computer _failed_ to detonate, he continued. "Of course, if you choose not to, we can always talk with someone else instead. Someone who'd want all sorts of details about illicit activity from the one hundred percent above-board, perfectly legal and _tax-paying_ Toybox…"

The laptop's screen flickered before a new window appeared, this time with coordinates, a map, and a location.

Outside of the Pentagon City mall, just before midday.

"Didn't even ask who we were talking about," Cross mused, more for his own benefit than anything else. "Least she had the decency to not call him to Arlington…"

"Yes, because she'd _really_ call him _and_ us to the CIA's backyard." Noah shook his head, huffing slightly as he looked at the time. "We've got about another hour before we pull into the station. Try to get some rest, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah," Cross waved him off, laying back down on the top bunk.

And with that, the pair lapsed into silence, the peace of the cabin broken only by the hiss of steam slipping through Cross's teeth, Noah's fingers clicking across the keyboard, and the rattle of the rails that drew them closer and closer to their meeting.

"So we get into the station." Cross looked to Noah. "You lived here for a bit. What then?"

"We go downstairs to the metro once we get to Union Station, then transfer from the red line to the yellow and take that south," Noah explained, memorizing the location and shutting the laptop. "We'll either have to worry about accommodations later or just grab the first thing we find; it's not exactly prime tourist season, so we shouldn't have too much trouble on that end."

"That's all well and good, but what about our shit?" Cross asked, hefting a duffel bag. "I'd rather not be lugging this around in case we need to run away from Deathstroke the _fucking_ Terminator!"

"There should be lockers or something we can put them in, if memory serves." Noah ran a hand through his hair, sighing as the train traveled along, pulling closer and closer to the nation's capital. "Oh hey, I think that's where my friend's apartment should be over there."

" _Not_ helping!"

 **[==V==]**

Days tended to be fairly… _uneventful_ for the General, of late. A relic of a bygone era? He would vociferously argue otherwise, but alas, there was little more he could do. What was that term? Ah yes.

Resignation.

He scoffed. They'd have his resignation once he went in the ground. But until that day came… he fixed his lone eye at the computer screen, frowning as he noticed something out of place. Normally he could go an entire day without any more than the usual, generic low-priority housekeeping emails sent out to everybody. It had been more than six months since he'd received a high-priority mailing not sent as part of a blast.

And yet, there it was. An _encrypted_ message, requiring his personal codes to open. Codes he hadn't used since… he couldn't remember.

He read the contents, memorized them, committing the words to memory. Exactly five minutes later, just long enough for an average person to have read and reread three times, the message deleted itself.

Well then.

He pushed himself back from his desk and left his office, taking the coat he hung by the door, not even offering a word to the vapid 'secretary' they installed as his minder. It was close enough to midday that nobody would notice his absence. And it wasn't like he was important enough to warrant a personal detail, anyway.

Not anymore.

One metro stop. One and a half blocks east. One block south. And just inside of Metropolitan Park, directly opposite the rear of the post office, he saw them. Two young men, one tall, gangly, and practically _shaking_ with anticipation. The other shorter, more average of build, the only sign of distress the tension in his neck and jaw.

He completed two complete circuits of the area, scouting for any possible traps, and finding none. They were genuine, then. He wasn't sure whether to consider them foolish, naive, or optimistic. Perhaps all three. He couldn't keep delaying this.

General Wilson sat at the table, and without missing a step, slid his Beretta M9 out of its holster and held it at the ready beneath the table, ready to flip between the two men before him in a fraction of a second.

"You have one minute to give me a damn good reason to _not_ ruin everyone's day."

The soft click of the safety flicking off rang like thunder.

"Go."

 **[==V==]**

For the first five seconds of their time-limit, Cross and Noah exchanged panicked looks and, almost as one, dismissed the notion of wasting any further time by asking _how_ the old man had ID'd them so quickly. On the sixth, Cross nodded sharply at Noah and gave him the reigns.

"So what was the plan if the VP _had_ been killed?" Noah led off. "Would have needed a second Pet to get the President, and all in that one month before midterms."

"Pet Stranger in the Service," the General responded, not missing a beat. "Killed him myself."

"Espionage, treason, attempted assassination of the Commander in Chief. Open and shut, he would've been sent to the needle." Noah canted his head to the side slightly. "Or did the PRT try to order he be brought in alive?"

The _clank_ of the gun jerking beneath the table caused the Ability-users to flinch. "They _did_ bring him in alive. Watchdog sent the Triumvirate to his front door before the Secret Service could mobilize. He was in court and before a judge before anyone could say a word."

"Tch," Cross bit out a tense scoff. "The one time I _would_ have approved the shooter on the knoll wearing a suit…"

"What I wouldn't give for a turret in the cage." The gun jerked beneath the table again, making Cross flinch and Noah grit his teeth further. "You're joking about putting a well-deserved hole in Teacher, so you're not Pets we missed. That earns you five minutes. And you're also the first powered folk to _willingly_ seek me out. That's five more. So now you get to tell me exactly what it is that you want."

Noah opened his mouth to answer, but the tap of the gun had him snapping his jaw shut. "Not you, smooth talker. Him." General Wilson nodded towards Cross. "He wants _you_ to do the talking, so instead _he_ gets to tell me what you want.."

Cross grimaced at the renewed attention, but he didn't back down either. He took a few seconds to think, to get his bearings… and then he took a risk by leaning forwards, placing his arms on the table as he angled himself towards the general, staring him dead in the eye.

"The world," Cross started intently, his voice low and grim. "Is _fucked."_

For a moment, the table was silent as the hyperbole sunk in, along with the fact that as far as Cross and Noah were concerned… it was anything _but_ exaggeration.

"You actually believe what you're saying." It wasn't a question from the General. It was a statement.

"If you look—"

" _Not_ you," General Wilson interrupted Noah, before fixing his lone eye back onto Cross. "You were saying."

"Just look at the state of things in the US of A alone," Cross forged on. "We have the Nine trucking back and forth from coast to coast with impunity, warlords holding court in every major city, the west coast is under the rule of a shadow cabal, there's a cult of demon-worshipping psychopaths out in the boonies, and throughout it all, we have government and law enforcement _flailing_ to hold it all together in _spite_ of the fact that they have zero legitimacy left to their name, and are fighting each other for every nickel and dime that can be tossed their way. And that's _just_ the United States."

Cross leaned back in his seat and shook his head with a sad sigh. "The world ended in the May of 1982. We're just living in a very slow, very polite post-apocalypse, that is gradually but surely inching its way to becoming just as blatant and obvious as Mad Max. And nobody. Is doing. _Anything."_

"Don't forget the Nazis," Noah piped up. He flinched slightly when Wilson _and_ Cross glared at him, but held up his hands in surrender. "I'm Jewish. The fact that the Third Reich is getting a second wind is a bit… _concerning_ to me."

Wilson stared at Noah for a bit more before looking back to Cross. "The world is in a bad state and you're pissed. I understand that. But you still haven't answered this concerns _me_."

"Other than the world going down the shitter being something that concerns all human beings?" Cross asked snidely.

Wilson, however, didn't even twitch. "I'm an old man with one foot in the grave, and like you said, this apocalypse is slow-moving. Chances are I won't even be there to see the end. It's none of my business."

"Bullshit," Cross promptly shot back, staring at the general with cold determination. "That's cowardice, and you're no coward. We read up on you, General Wilson: you don't run _from_ danger, you run towards it. You fight till the end, until the mission is done and the enemy is dead… or you are." Cross leaned forwards again, staring the General straight in the eye. "And that's exactly why we chose you and why we're here."

"So you want to save the world," WIlson said softly, emotion finally entering his tone for the first time. A sense of age-old nostalgia. "You, what, want the world to _know_ you saved it. Is that it? Guts and glory?"

"None of that matters, does it?" Noah asked, folding his hands on the table in front of him and completely ignoring Wilson putting the gun on him again. "We stand before you, asking for your help. Asking you to help us make a change. Live or die, it doesn't matter; but I will not let myself just sit here and let _status quo_ condemn us, you, and everyone else on the planet to a slow death." He looked General Wilson in the eye. "Sir. You said it was none of your business. Would that change with soldiers at your command, however few, willing to do _whatever_ it took, and damn the consequences?

"If you think this is some kind of game—"

"Even if it is!" Cross interrupted, slamming his hands on the table and standing up. "What _else_ are we going to do, huh? Wear spandex, pose for action figures, and then just sit with our thumbs up our asses the moment it actually _matters_? Because I don't know about you, but I know _I'd_ rather do something meaningful with the time we have left." He offered a rueful grin, as if to countermand the ferocity he'd just put forth. "And if I have to go out, I want to know that I fought like hell every step of the goddamn way. Do we think this is a game? In a way… yes we do. Because this is us going all-in. Putting everything we have on the line. Because this?" Cross gestured at himself and Noah. "Us? It's all we have to give."

Cross dropped back into his seat and leaned back with a shrug and a wistful sigh. "Not like we're doing much with it anyways…"

Wilson stared at the Steam-man for a moment. Whatever was going on behind that eye, his face betrayed none of it. Silence reigned for a moment, and once that moment passed, the soft sound of General Wilson sliding his gun back into his holster and buttoning it shut rang through the park.

"Damn kids," he murmured. "Alright. I'm listening. Tell me what you want from me." Cross opened his mouth to speak. "And if you give me another soliloquy the gun comes back out."

Cross shrugged, seemingly unconcerned with the death threat. "Hey, what do you want from me? I was an English Major."

Wilson turned his eye to Noah, who raised an eyebrow.

"Political Science. Was a 1L before, well." Noah waved his hand dismissively. "I gather you were informed of us from a mutual contact. Did that missive include anything, or are we starting from square one with regards to our plan of action?"

Wilson's eye narrowed. "The reason I came here was that I was under the impression that I'd be meeting a contact from Toybox. I've been trying to contact them for years; thought that if I could promise a reliable supply of Tinkertech weaponry, Congress would glance away from their so-called 'peacekeepers'. Never heard back from them until today."

The second that processed, Cross scowled irritably and dug his phone out of his pocket so he could shoot said expression at the camera. "You're a real cocktease of a skank, you know that?"

The raspberry that sounded from the phone's speaker confirmed that the person on the other knew that very well indeed.

"And so the question remains. Square one, gentlemen," the General said.

So they told him. They told General Wilson exactly what they wanted to do… and he reacted exactly as everyone expected. Which is to say, with _complete_ disbelief and incredulity.

"I will say this much." Wilson glared, and the two squirmed beneath his gaze. "If you wanted to commit suicide, there are far simpler ways."

"It's our only option," Cross said, butting in. "The PRT and Protectorate, ineffective though they might be, have the people behind them. If we go up against them as we are, then we'll just be crushed like you were. We need to play their game… or rather, we need to _beat_ them at it. Place ourselves above every other hero in America, even the Triumvirate themselves, in one fell swoop. The only way to do that is to do what's never been done. We need to succeed… where the three strongest parahumans in the nation, if not the _world,_ have failed, or not even _tried_."

"Which is where I come in," Wilson said plainly.

"We have the will and we have the abilities," Cross continued, "but what we _need_ are the skills. Just because we're aware that we could die and we're willing to do so if need be _does not_ mean we _want_ to bite it. Best way to prevent that is to be able to fight like the best of the best. And this might just be the patriot in me speaking, but for our purposes, we're betting on the best still being the United States Special Forces."

"That said, it's not like we can walk into our local recruitment office and enlist," Noah said, taking his turn. "Not if we want to be able to make use of our… _natural advantages,_ shall we say, and not get punted into the ranks of our common enemy."

"Boot camp," Wilson scoffed. "You want _boot camp_. Have either of you ever even fired a gun in your lives?"

"Hunting rifle," Noah replied. "Twenty-two. Shot a rabbit." He smirked. "Tasted good."

"Best I've ever held is a paintball gun, and not even _I'm_ stupid enough to think that counts," Cross deadpanned, before quickly redonning his smirk. "But then, that _is_ what the place is for in the first place, ain't it? To _learn?"_

"A _school_ is for learning," Wilson replied calmly. "What you're asking for is to be broken down and reforged. If you think this is just some simple _training camp_ , then we're done here."

Cross's smirk dropped clean off his face. "In case you hadn't noticed, the 'best' part of either of us is our abilities. If you want us to get the best out of us, then 'reforging' is exactly right."

"Can we stop beating around the bush here?" Noah looked General Wilson in the eye, brows furrowed. "We have powers, the will to use them, and here we are practically throwing ourselves at your feet. Now we _know_ you've had issues with parahumans before, but that never stopped you from trying to benefit from them, all without being _beholden_ to them. And so here we are, reversing that relationship."

"We have the will and desire to change the world, but you're the man who can make it happen," Cross nodded firmly in agreement. "The bottom line is that you make us into soldiers, then we'll be _your_ soldiers. For the first time since the golden bastard wrecked the world… _you_ will be the one in command."

"Much as I am loathe to listen to admit that my old pastor had _any_ wisdom whatosever, the Bible explicitly warns of trusting those who come offering power," Wilson replied, his tone almost sardonic. Which, honestly, was the lightest it had been the entire meeting.

"Think about it this way," Noah said. "We already made that bargain. For you, it would just be by proxy. And really." He spread his hands, a languorous smirk on his face. "What do you have to _lose_ , here? I'd wager… nothing, really."

"Getting in the PRT's way is _not_ good for one's military career," Cross singsang with a smile—THWACK!—before grimacing as _someone's_ foot rammed into his shin. "Shutting up now."

"Good," Noah said. "Now, where were we?"

"Trying to impress upon you young gentlemen what kind of hell you're asking me to drop you into." General Wilson squared his shoulders, tilting his chin back just a tad, and yet even that slight movement was enough to give the impression that he was genuinely looking _down_ on them. "If you choose to do this, you will hurt. You will bleed. You will struggle, through blood, sweat, and tears, cursing your very existence every second of the way. You will experience the very depths of human misery." He gave the two a long, hard look, allowing the words to sink in. From the way Cross began to fidget, and from the dull grinding of Noah's teeth, it was easy to tell that his words had an effect. "Even knowing this, do you _still_ wish to follow through with this."

For close to a straight minute, the pair fell dead silent in their seats, and shared a meaningful look.

Then, Noah grit his teeth and straightened in his chair. "The second we got caught up in this _ridiculous_ game of Cops and Robbers that's taken over the world, we were doomed to go through all of that and more anyways."

Cross let out a sharp " _Tsk"_ as he scratched the back of his head. "At least this way, it's on our terms and we get something out of it. And hell, who knows: we survive, maybe we can manage to bring playtime to an end."

"... I see." A small smirk played across General Wilson's face. "There are some strings I can pull. Again, gentlemen, I warn you now, it will _hurt_. But in six months—"

"Three," Cross broke in. "We need to be done in half that." He grimaced as General Wilson quirked the brow over his remaining eye, as if to prompt him to continue. "We know, it'll be pure hell. But even if the world's circling the drain at a snail's pace, we're _twenty years_ behind in trying to save it. I'd rather get through this and suffer more, rather than take double the amount of time and have someone else do it in my place."

The General stared at the Steam-man incredulously for a second before looking to his counterpart. "And you second this?"

"Yes." And that was all he said in reply.

"In that case, gentlemen." General Wilson stood from the table, holding himself in a firm, authoritative stance. "You will report back at this location tomorrow, at thirteen hundred hours. Enjoy your last twenty-four hours as free men, because starting tomorrow, your sorry hides will be property of the United States Government." The General snapped into a sharp salute.

"Ooh-Rah, sir!" Cross brought an arm up into a salute, while Noah's came up in a somewhat hesitant, even half-hearted approximation.

"Saying that would be considered an _insult_ where you're heading," Wilson informed the two flatly. "And your salutes are atrocious… But don't worry."

Then, for the first time in their entire conversation, Wilson's expression changed. And looking at his smirk, the two men knew _true_ fear.

"You'll learn."

 **[==V==]**

"Stand to _attention. Now."_

Noah snapped to a ramrod straight pose, back straight, chin up, shoulders back, arm clasped behind him, and knees locked. Cross looked over to him and copied immediately, shifting to set his legs shoulder width apart. Between the two of them, it's possible they got it _mostly_ right, if somebody was being generous.

"Gentlemen. Welcome to hell."

Unfortunately, somebody was most certainly _not_ in a generous mood.

"Now I've seen quite a few sorry sad sacks of shit walk into and out of my office over the years, but Lord oh mighty are you two the most hopeless, the most pathetic, the most _ridiculous_ pair I've seen in almost a decade."

Behind his desk, First Sergeant Leroy Murphy did not raise his voice. He did not yell. He did not scream. He did feel the need to get up in the pair's faces and yell loud enough that he left drops of spittle on their eyelids when they flinched. First Sergeant Leroy Murphy sat behind his desk and _spoke calmly_ , General Wilson standing beside and behind him.

"Now that said, I'm not entirely _un_ happy. For one, neither of you is a fat fuck that I need to send back to the city for liposuction." Noah cracked a smirk at that one. "You think I wouldn't!? I've done it before, and I'll do it again. And second, at least neither of you is some know-it-all gun nut that thinks _they_ know more than _us_. And believe you me, I've seen that bullshit too. So unless one of you is about to start telling me why a commie Ay-Kay is better than the good old M16, we are off to a good start.

"Now I am going to tell you two, I know just about _jack shit_ of what makes you two so damn special that Willy here wanted me and my men, and _only_ me and my men, in charge of you. So you're going to tell me what makes you more worth my time than the two dozen _already half trained_ Delta hopefuls out training right this instant. And keep it quick and _concise_ , gentlemen."

The two of them shared a look. And this time, Cross took the lead on it.

"We have powers," Cross explained. "Complementary ones. I flash boil, he flash freezes, we have apparently bottomless internal reservoirs of water we can fill for later use by drinking, and physics only applies when convenient."

"Well then let's see how that works then!" First Sergeant Murphy opened up a drawer on his desk, grabbed a pair of apples, and tossed them at the pair. Cross caught his with one hand, while Noah reached to grab it with both. "Now show me what you can do, and make it quick!"

Cross sunk a fingernail into the apple's skin, and brought the other hand up to keep it from flying onto the 1SG's desk. The smallest exertion of will, and the fluids in the apple flash-boiled, blowing the apple to hot, steamy bits as the fruit's skin failed to contain the rapid expansion of vaporized apple juice. A small piece still managed to land on Murphy's hand, and a test with his finger showed it was _definitely_ as hot as the steam wafting from it implied, though the superheated pulped fruit absolutely failed to bother Cross in the slightest.

Moments later, Noah's nail carved a crescent moon into the apple. An instant later it grew with a sharp _crack_ , the liquid growing as it froze. With a negligent tilting of his hand, the frozen chunks of apple fell to the floor and shattered, condensation misting off of the fruit chunks' surface.

Murphy snorted as he shoved a chunk of pulp off his desk and into a trash bin with a pencil. "And you think these 'powers', as you so generously define them, will actually faze _anyone_? Don't make me _laugh_ , gentlemen, that's a _parlor trick_ at best."

"Hey, that's on us to develop, not you." Cross grunted as he… well, crossed his arms in challenge.

"And you didn't exactly offer the best demonstration material," Noah added. "There's no such thing as powers that aren't dangerous. Just _people_ that aren't."

"Now putting us through the kind of hell needed to become those people, that's _why_ we came to _you_." Cross started to smirk, but hastily dropped it in favor of remaining dead serious when Noah elbowed him. "We don't want to be superheroes, sir. Superheroes don't solve problems, they're damage control. _Soldiers_ solve problems. And we _need_ to be soldiers."

"Hell, General." Murphy looked to Wilson with a smirk. "Looks like Christmas may just have come early this year. You know, I always wanted to try my hand at making super-soldiers, but good luck prying any para's loose from the Prissy Team's hands."

"Prissy?" Noah asked, unable to help himself.

"I am remembering that for the rest of my life…" Cross sighed blissfully, a look of pure rapture on his face.

"Son." First Sergeant Murphy gave Noah _The Look_ ™. "I challenge you to look at a grown-ass man wearing nothing but skin-tight spandex and calling himself some make-believe fantasy name, and tell me he isn't a pretty little princess at heart!" He nodded at the General. "I'll give them a shot. Now gentlemen, follow me to the barracks. For the next three months, they will be your home and your castle, and I expect you to _treat_ it as such. Then to the quartermaster, and then?"

Murphy _smiled_.

"Welcome to hell."

 **[==V==]**

Cross and Noah had only been given the bare minimum of time at the small barracks set aside for the two before Murphy was upon them, uniforms and combat boots for the two of them in hand. Five minutes to change and then he was back, correcting their stance, posture, angle of salute, angle of their _toes_ …

"Seems inconsequential, doesn't it?" Murphy asked, almost rhetorically. "It offers structure! Regularity! Uniformity! The building blocks of camaraderie! Now, these will be your uniform. This will be your home, your castle. Spend the rest of this day getting used to it, making it home. Because starting tomorrow, you will both be following Murphy's Law: what Murphy says, _is_ the law!"

"Ya know, that still counts in the traditional sense: this is everything that could go wrong happening at once," Cross chuckled to himself, not even trying to be subtle about it.

The First Sergeant shot a sidelong glare at the Steam-man. "Oh, we are going to have some _fun_ grinding the wiseass out of you."

Cross snorted derisively. "Good luck, four straight years of college couldn't manage it, so I wouldn't go counting _those_ chickens."

A _very_ toothy grin came over the duo's commanding officer. "Congratulations. I officially can't wait for tomorrow to begin."

"And when _does_ tomorrow begin, to be specific?" Noah cut in with no small amount of wariness, shooting a glare at an unapologetic Cross in the process.

"0700 hours, so sleep lightly," the military man informed them firmly. "Once you get up, we'll be putting you through your paces so we can evaluate where you currently stand and see just how much work is ahead of us. Be prepared to sweat, bleed and ache from parts of your bodies you weren't even aware you had. Though, of course…" Murphy's expression became far grimmer as he stepped aside and indicated the door with a nod. "If either of you two have any second thoughts, you can always take the easy way out. I'm assuming you noticed the bell in the middle of the courtyard on our way here?"

Almost immediately, the Ability-users expressions sobered up into expressions of total resolve, and they both pinned the Sergeant with a determined stare.

"Yeah, we saw it," Noah confirmed with a sub-zero tone of voice.

"And if you want to hear it, you'd best go and ring that bell yourself," Cross fumed, snorting out a trail of steam. "Because no matter what you do to us, we are _not_ quitting."

The First Sergeant gave the both of them a searching once before turning towards the door, shaking his head. "We'll see about that, boys. We'll see." And with those parting words, he departed, leaving the pair to their devices.

"…So! You know, I was expecting bunk beds,"" Noah broke the silence after a straight minute, looking around their new 'castle' curiously.

It was a rather small room, just a touch bigger than a standard college dorm room really. Two cots pressed up against the walls, footlockers at their feet for the pair's personal belongings. A small drawer beneath that held their new uniforms, as well as the casual clothes they'd been wearing when they arrived, and their own personal effects.

Noah hummed thoughtfully. "Housing us away from the rank and file… probably set this up lock, stock, and barrel for us. Maybe even in the last _day_."

"What'd you expect?" Cross asked, laying down on his cot, arms over his head. "We _aren't_ the rank and file. We have powers. We were already different from the get go. Plus, one wrong word slips out and the _Prissies,_ " the laughter in Cross's voice was almost _childish._ "Would descend on this place like locusts."

"True." Noah sighed, and sat down on his own cot. "Not sure what the hardest workout you've ever done was, but I'm fairly sure that what we're about to go through is—"

"You know they're going to try and turn us on one another, right?" Cross interrupted Noah. He sat up from his own cot, staring at his brother in arms. "You know what I mean.'If you don't do this in the next five minutes, you both suffer' kind of crap. And it's going to be worse because it's not going to be a whole platoon on one person, it's us against each other." He stood up and walked over to Noah. "We can't let that shit get to us, you got it? This is already going to suck, but if we let them turn us against each other, it's going to be even worse, make it feel like a personal attack, you know?"

"Yeah, I do," Noah said, standing up to look Cross in the eyes. "And… I'll try. I can't promise it won't work, you _know_ I have a temper and—"

"And that doesn't mean shit!" Cross exclaimed, flinging his arms out wide. "It's us versus them. Even when they're trying to motivate us to work against each other. It has to be _us_ versus _them_. Which, let's be honest, isn't any different then how it's been our entire time on this rock. So basically? Status quo."

The two of them shared a look. And finally, Noah cracked a wry grin.

"Damn, why couldn't _I_ be the one who's good at motivational speeches?" He joked.

"Cause life took that too when it stole any chance of you ever looking this _gooood?"_ Cross sneered, gesturing down at himself.

"Oh, shut up!"

"In argument speak, that means I win!"

"Only in your dreams," Noah retorted, laying back down and putting his arm over his face. "And on that note, it's time to get some shuteye. Maybe try falling asleep before me."

"Oh I plan to," Cross sneered, folding his arms behind his head. "Your snoring is loud enough to wake the dead…"

"Lemme help you with that."

THWACK!

"OW!...but good trajectory with that boot."

"I try."

 **[==V==]**

Cold concrete greeted the two the next morning. It greeted their heads as they bounced and lolled and recoiled from the pain. It greeted their joints as what should have been at least _moderately_ comfortable cots were suddenly solid, unyielding stone.

"Guh—WHAT THE _HELL_ , ASSHOLES!?" Cross was the first of the two on his feet, clad in naught but the undershirt and camo pants he'd forgotten to take off the night before. "Whatever happened to using a _bugle_ , or a bucket of cold—oh wait that second one wouldn't really do much would it. But still, WHAT ABOUT THE _BUGLE_!?"

" _Are you always this loud in the morning?"_

The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, echoing off the walls of the warehouse the two now found themselves in. Gouts of steam leapt off of Cross as he and Noah went back to back, the latter trying to figure out how his glasses had gotten on his face while scanning the other end of the warehouse.

" _Admirable instinct. But not good enough."_

 _Something_ fell from directly above the two and landed simultaneous blows at their backs, knocking them away across the rough concrete. Cross and Noah recovered as quickly as they could, turned to the figure with them in the warehouse—and froze.

Matte black armor seemed to drink in what little light existed in the dim warehouse, the shadows in the man's stance hiding myriad weapons that the pair only _hoped_ were unloaded. A pair of larger weapons, possibly swords, possibly something else, sat crossed on his back. In one hand, he held a pair of throwing knives between two knuckles. In the other, a combat knife as long as either of the two's forearms.

And staring down at them from within the half-orange-half-black mask looming over them was a single, narrowed, malice-filled eye.

"You get three months. We will repeat this exercise once every week of those three months." He walked towards the pair, steps feeling far louder than they should have been due to the cramped quarters. "If you are not up to my expectations by then, we will try again over _six_ months. And if you _still_ fail to rise to the level required?... well."

General Slade Wilson tossed the knives in a casual motion, and Noah and Cross suddenly found two leaf-shaped blades of metal sitting at their feet.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." He gestured at the knives, which the two hurried to pick up.

"Now then."

The second the blades were in the pair's hands, he started tapping his own in his palm as he walked forwards.

"Shall we?"


End file.
